PRIVATE BUSINESS

London Local Authorities Bill [ Lords]

Ordered,
	That so much of the Lords Message [17th November] as relates to the London Local Authorities Bill [ Lords] be now considered.
	 Resolved,
	That this House concurs with the Lords in their Resolution. —[First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]
	 Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

WORK AND PENSIONS

The Secretary of State was asked—

Cold Weather Payment

Phyllis Starkey: How many households in Milton Keynes he estimates will be eligible for cold weather payments if the temperature falls below the level which triggers payment of the allowance in 2008-09.

Rosie Winterton: We estimate that the number of households that would be eligible this winter for a cold weather payment in Milton Keynes, should such payments be triggered, is 84,000.

Phyllis Starkey: I am sure that my constituents will welcome the extra money should it be required, but would it not be a better long-term solution to insulate more houses more effectively? Is my right hon. Friend's Department considering sharing data with other Departments, so that Warm Front grants, for example, can be more effectively targeted at those who are known to be on low incomes because they are in receipt of various benefits?

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend raises the important question of how we get the information to people who may be eligible. As I am sure that she knows, people on certain means-tested benefits are eligible for Warm Front grants, but they have to claim them. We are working with the Department for Energy and Climate Change to make sure that we can use some of the ways that we used to ensure that people on lower incomes were aware of benefits such as pension credit. We will work with the Department for Energy and Climate Change on that basis.

Mark Lancaster: Of course, many of the households in Milton Keynes that the Minister mentioned will be made up of pensioners, who will be delighted that finally, after months of dithering, the Government have renewed the Post Office card account contract. Does she not believe that those pensioners should be allowed to use that account to pay their utility bills, so that they can enjoy the benefits gained by others who pay by direct debit?

Rosie Winterton: Pensioners are already able to arrange a direct debit payment with other banks, but in the longer term, we will of course look at ways in which the Post Office card account could increase its functionality.

Domestic Heating Engineers

Barry Sheerman: What steps the Health and Safety Executive takes to ensure that workers in the installation and maintenance of domestic heating systems are fully qualified.

Jonathan R Shaw: Gas safety law requires work in domestic premises to be performed only by competent people. The law also requires installers to register with the HSE-approved body, CORGI. That includes demonstrating that employees are approved in the correct way. Self-employed installers must also fulfil those requirements. The HSE enforces the law.

Barry Sheerman: My hon. Friend will know that three of my constituents, including a little boy of 10, Dominic Rodgers, were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Many of us in this House are part of a campaign to make sure that such a thing never happens again. CORGI is to end as a brand, and as a trainer, and Capita will take over, so it is a sensitive time for the gas industry and its safety. Can my hon. Friend assure me that the transition will be smooth, and that in April we will have a better product than we do now?

Jonathan R Shaw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, and I am aware of the campaign that he has been involved with in his constituency relating to the Dominic Rodgers Trust. There has been a reduction in the number of fatalities due to carbon monoxide poisoning, and we continue the work of raising awareness. He is right to point out that the transition arrangements for the new contract awarded by the HSE will include further awareness-raising, and will allow a smooth transition to ensure that customers and installers are aware of the new requirements under the contract.

David Evennett: CORGI estimates that as many as 20,000 people are working illegally with gas in the UK. What more can the Government do to ensure that the public are aware of the dangers of employing unqualified workers?

Jonathan R Shaw: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question. He is right: about 10 per cent. of installations are still carried out by people who are not registered with CORGI, and more needs to be done on that. As part of the arrangements for the new contract with Capita, that body will donate about £1.7 million to a charity. My noble Friend Lord McKenzie is asking other energy providers to put in resources, too. That fund will be used further to raise awareness. The more we do to raise awareness, the greater the reduction in the number of fatalities will be.

Jim Sheridan: Will my hon. Friend ensure that engineers who install heating systems are well aware of some of the toxic substances that surround heating systems, such as asbestos? Will he make sure that people get the proper equipment when working with that toxic substance, which causes disease, as there are long-term cancerous effects from working with it?

Jonathan R Shaw: My hon. Friend is right to draw the House's attention to the necessity for people receiving installations to ensure that the fitter is reputable and properly registered, and to workers' health and safety, and I am grateful for his comments.

Tom Levitt: In 2005, two young people died in my constituency of carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of inadequately attended gas installations. Two pensioners died a year ago in my constituency for the same reason, and, 10 days ago, another pensioner died of suspected carbon monoxide poisoning, and his wife was lucky to survive. Will my hon. Friend do everything that he can to promote the use of carbon monoxide monitors to complement the work that he talks about, perhaps by ensuring, for example, that every time a house is sold, the home information pack requires there to be a carbon monoxide monitor in the house?

Jonathan R Shaw: As I said in answer to an earlier question, under the new arrangements, the operator, Capita, will put in substantial sums of money, and we want there to be further amounts of money to raise awareness, so that people know that the installation of their gas central heating system, which is the predominant heating source in this country, will be undertaken by an appropriately qualified installer. I shall pass on my hon. Friend's comments about monitors to my noble Friend Lord McKenzie as he works with the industry to ensure that the number of deaths continues to fall.

Jobseeker's Allowance

Philip Dunne: How many jobseeker's allowance claimants there were in (a) the UK and (b) Ludlow constituency on the latest date for which figures are available.

James Purnell: The number of people in the UK claiming jobseeker's allowance in October was 980,900. In Ludlow, the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance was 651.

Philip Dunne: I am delighted that the Secretary of State is aware that unemployment in Ludlow has gone up by 10.5 per cent. in the past year alone, but why are there 300,000 fewer British people in work today than two years ago, while there are almost 1 million migrant workers in work?

James Purnell: On the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question, we totally understand that people will be worried about the economic circumstances, and our commitment is to do everything that we can to help people get back into work if they lose their job. That is why we have announced, for example, an extra £100 million—to do exactly that. We will do that to ensure that we never reach the unemployment levels that we had in the past—almost 3,000 people, not 651, in his constituency—at the height of the previous recession.

Peter Hain: The fact that the numbers of people on jobseeker's allowances are rising is, nevertheless, a big contrast compared with the 1980s and 1990s, when people were just abandoned in the terrible Tory years.  [I nterruption .] As we are entering a period of turbulence in the jobs markets and rising unemployment, will my right hon. Friend specifically look at the question of people not receiving their benefit and support quickly, if not immediately, particularly in respect of mortgage relief and of those who are made redundant? People should receive their benefit right away and then be helped back into work, instead of languishing for a period in no-person's land.

James Purnell: We are introducing today the lone parent changes, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for that radical welfare reform package, for which he was responsible. He is absolutely right: we need to ensure that we get people their benefits as soon as possible, and that is why we have brought forward the help that people receive if they lose their job and need to pay their mortgage, from 39 weeks, as it was under the Conservative Government, to 13 weeks.
	I know that Opposition Members did not like it, but my right hon. Friend was absolutely right to remind them that in the '80s and '90s, millions of people were abandoned when the Conservatives massaged the figures to get people on to incapacity benefit. We will not repeat that mistake.

Jennifer Willott: Given that the number of new jobseeker's allowance claims is rising quickly alongside unemployment, and that Government policy changes mean that an extra 350,000 people will be moved on to JSA between now and 2011, at the same time as the Department for Work and Pensions plans another 7,000 job cuts on top of the 16,000 jobs that have already been lost, will the Secretary of State guarantee that Jobcentre Plus staff will have the time and resources to deal with the increasing work load? Does he agree that this is the time to recruit more Jobcentre Plus staff, rather than to continue with job cuts?

James Purnell: The hon. Lady is right to say that we need to make a commitment to do everything that we can to help people find their next job. However, she misunderstands the nature of the efficiency changes that we have made; they are about moving people from back-office jobs to the front line. Actually, there are 1,500 more personal advisers today than two years ago, so we have got more people to the front line. On top of that, we are retaining an extra 2,000 people who were helping us with the introduction of the employment and support allowance; they will now help us with the higher volume of claims. The hon. Lady will have to wait for the Chancellor of the Exchequer's announcement later this afternoon to see whether anything further is coming.

Lindsay Hoyle: Will my right hon. Friend look towards ensuring that there is a skill match for people who have lost their jobs and that if those people need to be trained, training is available immediately, rather than their having to wait a long time before qualifying? That would begin to help the situation at Leyland Trucks, where jobs have, tragically, been lost. With a bit of skill matching and extra training, we can get those skilled people back into work. That is the kind of support that they need. Will my right hon. Friend look towards assisting them?

James Purnell: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The earlier we can get help to people, the easier it will be for them to find their next job. That is exactly what we want to do. We want to make sure that the rapid response service helps people when redundancies are announced, before they even lose their jobs, so that they can be provided with help on retraining. As my hon. Friend says, with a small amount of retraining, people with good skills can get back into work quickly. That is exactly what the extra £100 million that we have announced is, in part, designed to do.

Mark Harper: I listened carefully to the Secretary of State's answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne); he did not even attempt to answer my hon. Friend's point about the impact of migrant workers. As the recession bites and unemployment rises, what plans does the right hon. Gentleman have to make representations to the migration advisory committee, so that when it considers shortage occupations, it looks first at people who will be helped by the Government's welfare reform programme, rather than bringing in people from outside the country to do those jobs?

James Purnell: Is the Conservative party against migration now? The tone of its questioning is getting suspiciously close to that. It is important that we have a system for managing migration effectively, and that is exactly why we are bringing in the system based on the Australian points system. However, it is important to remember that in the past 10 years we have gone from being the poorest country in the G7 to being the second richest. Three million more people are in work than in 1997. We come from a context in which, earlier this year, we had the lowest unemployment count since the 1970s and the highest employment ever. We now need to make sure that we do everything that we can to help people fairly through the coming downturn. That absolutely involves welfare reform to get people back into work.

Occupational Pensions

Andrew Love: What steps his Department has taken to protect employee occupational pensions.

James Purnell: The Government have introduced a more powerful and proactive pensions regulator to protect the benefits of occupational pension scheme members. The Pension Protection Fund and the financial assistance scheme provide protection to members of eligible defined-benefit occupational pension schemes.

Andrew Love: In recent years, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of defined-benefit pension schemes, and that issue is likely to be exacerbated by the slump in the stock market. A gap has therefore opened up between provision in the private and public sectors, and there are those who suggest that the way to solve the problem is to reduce benefits in the public sector. Surely, however, we should be looking at the issue exactly the other way round. What more can my right hon. Friend do to try to protect and enhance defined-benefit schemes in the private sector, so that we can ensure dignity in retirement?

James Purnell: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to achieve a balance between protecting employees' benefits and the promises made to employees, and encouraging employers to continue to contribute to the schemes that they have set up. That is exactly what we intend to do. We are considering where we can reduce regulation—for example, by reducing the section 75 obligations when they get in the way of people restructuring appropriately. Furthermore, we have changed the inflation indexation and made it absolutely clear through the pensions regulator that contributions have to be affordable and should not put a business at risk. That is the right approach: balancing protecting people's benefits with encouraging employers to continue to contribute.

Kelvin Hopkins: Are we not looking towards a future in which only compulsory state earnings-related pension schemes for everyone, with good defined benefits, will make sure that there is no poverty in old age?

James Purnell: My hon. Friend is right to say that the additional part of the state pension is vital. That is why I am sure that he welcomes the changes that we have made to the state second pension; they will bring equality for women, recognise caring contributions and make the system an awful lot simpler. I am sure that he will also welcome the huge changes that will come through the implementation of the Turner commission's recommendations. That will mean that instead of only a minority of people benefiting from company pensions, as in the past, all employees will have the right to an occupational pension matched by the Government and their employer. That fundamental change will increase people's benefits and bring them equality, as was never achieved in the past.

Oliver Heald: As more employers become insolvent during the recession, will the Secretary of State have to come back to the House and ask for an increase in the levy for the Pension Protection Fund? If not, how will he balance the need to have enough money in the scheme to meet calls on it and yet not overload pension schemes, which are already closing under the sort of pressure that he has mentioned?

James Purnell: The Pension Protection Fund announced very recently that it did not foresee any increase in the levy and that it would keep it at its current level. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is glad that we fixed the roof while the sun was shining and brought in the pensions regulator and the PPF. That is in huge contrast to the Government whom he supported, who were warned about this by Labour Members in the '90s and did absolutely nothing about it, so that we then had to pick up the pieces through the financial assistance scheme.

Malcolm Wicks: Given the importance of occupational pension security, which many workers feel is as important to them as the asset of their own home, and given the Labour Government's proud record in introducing the regulator and the Pension Protection Fund, can my right hon. Friend assure the House that the new consultation will do nothing at all to diminish the responsibilities of employers to workers' pensions?

James Purnell: Yes, absolutely. We have made that very clear in the consultation. Our aim is to make it possible for companies to have legitimate business restructuring, but only where the employer covenant remains just as strong. That is why the pensions regulator is there, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the important role that he played in my Department in ensuring that these changes were brought in.

David Heathcoat-Amory: When I asked the Department in July how many final salary schemes were in deficit, the answer was 5,000, but the then Minister showed no particular concern about or interest in this matter. Will the Secretary of State give an updated figure for the number of such schemes and tell us what he will do about the large number of companies that are, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) said, obliged to top up final salary schemes in deficit and to pay escalating fees to the Pension Protection Fund, all in the middle of a recession? Will he now grip this problem rather than simply abandoning it?

James Purnell: We are gripping the problem. That is exactly why the pensions regulator gave the advice to which I referred earlier, which is that people have to continue to address their deficits but what they do must be affordable in the current economic circumstances. The last thing that anyone would want us to do is to push out of business a company that has a perfectly viable future, because of contributions being made at this very moment— but the pensions regulator has to be assured that those contributions will be made so that the deficit is addressed. On the hon. Gentleman's specific point about the figure, I will write to him with the latest information.

Nigel Waterson: Will the Secretary of State confirm to the House that it is only under his Government that over 70,000 occupational pension schemes have been wound up since 1997, and that savings in those that survive have halved in just the past 18 months? Does his consultation on the obligations of employers towards pension deficits show a dawning realisation on his part that heaping extra costs and red tape on to these schemes has served only to hasten their demise?

James Purnell: As the hon. Gentleman knows very well, the trend in defined-benefit schemes has been the same all around the world. Employers have been trying to get those risks off their balance sheets. Indeed, the Turner commission said that the previous system was a fool's paradise where people were making promises that they could not afford to pay for, and where Governments of both colours, including the hon. Gentleman's, loaded regulation on to schemes through legislation. We are now addressing that. As he knows—I think that his party supports this—we have changed the rules on indexation, we are examining the section 75 provisions, and we are looking into overriding scheme rules where that is appropriate. However, we need to do that in a way that protects employees, because it would be wrong to unwind the promises made to people who decided to work for those companies on the basis of such promises.

Mortgage Support

David Crausby: What support his Department offers in respect of mortgage repayments to people who have lost their jobs.

Tony McNulty: As part of income-related benefits, help is available towards the interest on mortgages. We have announced that from January 2009 help will be available for the first £175,000 of the mortgage for new working-age claims and that, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the waiting period for new claims will be reduced from 39 to 13 weeks. We are considering the effect that the 1.5 per cent reduction in the Bank of England base rate will have on the standard interest rate, and we will make an announcement in due course.

David Crausby: The loss of a home can have the most traumatic effects on a family, and in the long term can cost us all significantly more in human and financial terms than the cost of saving the mortgage in the first place. Will he do all that he can to ensure that protection from eviction lies at the heart of our Government's policy?

Tony McNulty: I will certainly do all that I can on income-related benefits, and I will pass my hon. Friend's concern on to those in the Government who have already taken significant action on the points that he raises about housing. We will have to wait and see whether anything else is forthcoming when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor makes his statement later on today.

James Gray: Will the Minister tell the House how many people will be affected by the time limitation he is introducing in January 2009?

Tony McNulty: At the moment, considerable help is being afforded people. As and when more claims are made between now and 2009—

James Gray: How many?

Tony McNulty: I do not know, and neither does the hon. Gentleman— [ Interruption. ] With respect, neither does the hon. Gentleman, for all his pomposity. It is simply a shift from 39 weeks to 13 weeks. Anyone who claims from January onwards will be directly impacted.

Katy Clark: I welcome what the Minister has said. Would he agree that the thrust of Government policy has got to be to keep people in their own homes in this difficult period? I welcome what he said about help with mortgage payments being given wherever possible, but does he agree that where it is not possible, we need to keep people in their own homes? If necessary, the Government should take over property and convert mortgages into rents.

Tony McNulty: I am not sure about my hon. Friend's last point, but as she rightly implies, the help given is but one small element of what the Government can do to help people protect their homes, and to ensure that they keep them. I agree with her broad point that the Government should work across the piece—much more broadly than the work of the Department for Work and Pensions—to ensure that people's homes are preserved, especially in a period of economic downturn.

Gary Streeter: I welcome the Minister's first answer, even though he seems to have gone slightly downhill since. Can he explain why the system, which has been encouraging people to own homes for the past 11 years, and quite rightly so, still does much more to support those paying rent than those paying a mortgage, even among those with modest incomes in modest houses? I welcome the changes, but why does the system still prefer those in rented accommodation?

Tony McNulty: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's comments. I am not sure that he is entirely right about discrimination in the system in favour of tenants rather than home owners. There are, after all, two entirely different prevailing legal circumstances. With regard to income-related benefits, we are trying to do all that we can to provide support to both the home owner, given their circumstances, and the tenant, given theirs. They are not entirely comparable in the way the hon. Gentleman implies.

Housing Benefit

Karen Buck: What assessment he has made of recent trends in expenditure on housing benefit for those in the private rented sector.

Kitty Ussher: Expenditure on housing benefit for those in the private sector has increased in recent years, driven by increases in rents and a shift towards the private sector in the rental market as a whole. The latest forecasts of case load and expenditure will be published alongside this afternoon's pre-Budget report.

Karen Buck: A lot of media attention has been paid recently to a handful of cases of homeless households on housing benefit being placed in very expensive accommodation in the private rented sector. In seeking to respond to some of those extremes when looking at the wider reform of housing benefit, will my hon. Friend assure me that it is not the Government's intention to ensure that swathes of our towns and cities are no longer affordable for low-income households, particularly bearing in mind that housing benefit is an in-work benefit? Will she avoid the trap we have fallen into so often in the past of crowding low-income households together into estates, communities and whole boroughs? That way lies all the social problems we are working so hard to overcome.

Kitty Ussher: My hon. Friend is right to make that point. There is an intrinsic value in mixed communities, but an issue of fairness arises when people on benefits have access to higher quality accommodation than working families could possibly countenance. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has taken steps to cap the housing benefit rate at five bedrooms. As we develop our housing review proposals, I would be happy to work with my hon. Friend to test them against the circumstances in her constituency.

Graham Stuart: The decision to cut the backdating time limit will reduce the take-up of benefits, increase pensioner poverty and cause distress to many elder citizens. How can the Under-Secretary justify it?

Kitty Ussher: We are working with lobby groups to make it far easier, especially for pensioners, to access the benefits to which they are entitled by reducing the number of separate forms that they have to fill in and creating greater behind-the-scenes liaison between the various parts of the public sector, thus ensuring that people get the help that they need and to which they have a right.

Ronnie Campbell: A landlord with 30 properties in my constituency came to me the other week and said that the new system whereby the rent rebate is paid straight into the tenant's bank means that, unfortunately, when tenants are overdrawn, the banks take the rent and he does not get it. He has two or three tenants who are at least three or four weeks behind and he is having to take proceedings against them.

Kitty Ussher: On the whole, the system is working well, but the new regulations contain provisions, which, without knowing the specific details of the case, I would think that my hon. Friend's landlords could invoke. They provide that, if there is a genuine risk to the payment being passed to the landlord, direct payments can recommence. I therefore advise my hon. Friend to talk to his local authority to investigate that. However, across the board, a large increase in financial inclusion has occurred as a result of the proposals that we implemented.

Andrew Selous: The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), was right to mention a few moments ago the slow processing of benefits. Does the Under-Secretary know that in some parts of the country people are waiting nine to 10 weeks to have a new housing benefit claim processed? If they have just lost their job, they do not want nine to 10 weeks of rent arrears. In other parts of the country, because of the way in which the boundaries of the broad market rental areas are drawn, some people experience huge difficulty in finding properties with the local housing allowance that they are given. Will the Under-Secretary undertake to examine those two injustices seriously?

Kitty Ussher: The hon. Gentleman raises two issues that are local authorities' responsibility. I share the concern when some local authorities process benefits relatively swiftly and others take longer. In the latter case, we always put in resources to support those authorities and try to encourage the spread of best practice. However, the hon. Gentleman's question would be better addressed to the local authorities that should improve their performance.

Ken Purchase: Does the Under-Secretary share my concern about the many houses in the private sector that were originally council houses, which were bought at a considerable discount, that now have families in them who pay no rent but have the whole amount paid by the public sector through social services or social security? That means that, in many cases, the public sector pays for the house twice over because the madness of the Rent Service produces a rent for a former council house that is twice that of the council house next door. We must take steps to remedy that. What Anthony Crosland called the dog's breakfast of housing finance appears not to have gone way. It is still biting hard.

Kitty Ussher: Conservative party proposals led to a decision that, in its words, let housing benefit take the strain. That is one of the reasons for our new review of housing benefit. We want to ensure that it is fair to the taxpayer and individual families.

Lone Parents

Natascha Engel: What assistance his Department gives to lone parents to enable them to (a) return to and (b) remain in work.

Kitty Ussher: Lone parents have access to a comprehensive package of in-work and out-of-work support and advice via the new deal for lone parents, which has, to date helped more than 600,000 people into work nationally, including 560 in my hon. Friend's constituency.

Natascha Engel: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. With more people losing their jobs and fewer jobs becoming available, can she reassure me that lone parents on benefits, who are already among the very poorest, who cannot find good child care or suitable work will not have their benefit sanctioned?

Kitty Ussher: Absolutely, and we have changed the law to ensure that that is the case.

Anne McIntosh: The lack of availability and the high cost of child care are two reasons why it is difficult for lone parents, particularly parents of younger children, to return to work. What is the Minister's Department doing to encourage greater access to child care and will she comment on the lower number of child minders over recent months?

Kitty Ussher: The number of child care places has doubled under this Government. The hon. Lady mentions child minders. The proposals that we are introducing—they start today and will be rolled out over the next two years—apply to parents whose youngest child is seven and who will therefore be in full-time education. We have also introduced extra flexibilities to ensure that the regulations do not apply where neither appropriate child care nor the right kind of work for someone with such responsibilities is available. However, with the new duty on local authorities in England and the introduction of extended schools throughout the country by 2020, we do not think that that problem will be widespread.

Clive Efford: Can my hon. Friend give me an assurance that where we encourage parents to look for work under the new regime, in which the age for single parent benefit has been reduced, the system will be one not of coercion, but of encouragement? Will she also look into the types of work that people are encouraged to go into, to ensure that the jobs that they are offered are sustainable?

Kitty Ussher: We want to extend the support that has been available through the new deal for lone parents—and which has been shown to work—to single mums and dads of a much broader age range of children. However, as I said in response to an earlier question, if the job on offer is simply impossible to do because of that family unit's circumstances, the parent will not be sanctioned for not taking it up. Similarly, appropriate child care must be available. Crucially, however, that is not a decision for a Minister to make; it is part of a conversation that takes place between an experienced professional adviser and the parent in question.

Anne Begg: Lone parents are still saying that one of the biggest barriers to moving into work is that they may lose money as a result. That point has been made quite a bit over the weekend, in light of the changes taking place today and the new obligations on lone parents whose child has reached the age of 12. Can my hon. Friend please assure me that lone parents who are moving from benefit into work will always be better off?

Kitty Ussher: Yes.

Jobseeker's Allowance

Greg Hands: How many jobseeker's allowance claimants there were in (a) the UK and (b) Hammersmith and Fulham constituency at the latest date for which figures are available.

Tony McNulty: The number of people in the UK claiming jobseeker's allowance in October was 980,900. In Hammersmith and Fulham, the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance was 2,188.

Greg Hands: The Minister for London will know that at 7.4 per cent., London's unemployment rate is already the second highest of any UK region. Indeed, it is significantly higher than in either Scotland or Northern Ireland, which receive big public subsidies. Hammersmith and Fulham already suffers from a high unemployment rate. If the Minister came to my constituency, he would see shops and restaurants closing down and overcrowding on the tube and buses declining. Does he agree that now is the time to take another look at the amount of subsidy that London is paying the rest of the country, in an effort to do something about unemployment in our capital city?

Tony McNulty: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's starting characterisation. What I accept is that London's employment is particularly high. However, we cannot, as he implied we could, tell the nation—quite rightly—that the Olympics are a matter for the nation and not just London, or tell colleagues that something as significant as Crossrail is a national infrastructure asset, rather than something just for London, and then demand money back because of the geographic location of the City of London. It is utterly simplistic, but not uncommon for the hon. Gentleman, to put things in those terms. Indeed, given the characterisation of London that he draws, he might want to explain—in writing would be perfectly fine—how an amnesty for every illegal immigrant in London, which is currently his Mayor's position, fits into it.

Julian Brazier: May I urge the Minister to reconsider the threat of closure that hangs over the Whitstable jobcentre, in my constituency, at a time when there is considerable unemployment along the north Kent coast? Unemployment is rising both nationally and regionally, and the proposal will hit some of the most vulnerable people in my constituency.

Tony McNulty: I announced in passing last week that, given the economic downturn, I thought it appropriate to review the position regarding not only the 25 closures but the future estate rationalisation plan. I received the hon. Gentleman's letter last week, and I shall respond to him and other constituency MPs in due course.

Pension Schemes

Angela Watkinson: What recent discussions he has had with Treasury Ministers on the effect on pension schemes of Government tax policy since 1997.

Rosie Winterton: My colleagues and I have frequent contact with Treasury Ministers on a range of issues, including pensions. Together, we are working to encourage pension savings through, for example, the pension reforms in the Pensions Bill that will be considered by the House tomorrow.

Angela Watkinson: Government tax policy has cost pension funds £5 billion every year since 1997, as well as the growth that would have been realised had that money remained invested. Actuaries estimate that in the long term, the sum could reach £100 billion—a sum that might sound rather familiar by the end of this afternoon's pre-Budget report. Will the Minister acknowledge that that tax policy has had a devastating effect on pension funds and their contributors?

Rosie Winterton: As I am sure the hon. Lady knows, the changes regarding tax credits payable on dividends were made because there was an incentive for companies to pay dividends rather than reinvest in their future through investment in plant and machinery, for example. The changes were part of a package that included the reduction of corporation tax from 33 to 31 per cent. What made the real difference for pension funds and what was in them were the poor stock market conditions that followed.

Patrick Cormack: How many workers have had their legitimate pension expectations confounded since 1997?

Rosie Winterton: The actions that we have taken to support the pensions industry, including the measures in the Pensions Bill, will improve the position of pensions saving in this country. That message has been built up following the Turner commission and through political consensus on the need to ensure that pensions saving is improved.

Child Support Agency

Anthony D Wright: What progress has been made on the Child Support Agency's transition to the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.

Kitty Ussher: The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission took responsibility for the Child Support Agency from 1 November 2008, and is on track to meet its target for this financial year, which was set by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Anthony D Wright: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. During its existence, the CSA collected more than £6 billion, but billions more are still uncollected. Will that debt pass to the new commission, and will the commission's new powers cover that debt, or will it be written off?

Kitty Ussher: No part of the targets that I have just mentioned, which were set by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, include collecting more of the debt—another £70 million for this year, raising the sum to £1.08 billion in this financial year. The commission's new powers are not in force yet, but we expect it to raise the amount of debt that is collected even further.

Nicholas Winterton: Does the Minister accept that many Members receive a large number of letters and representations from our constituents about the CSA? I am genuinely seeking information on this issue: what size is the backlog of cases as the CSA is transferred to the new body? The issue is critical, as many of my constituents wait a long time to get the maintenance that they require.

Kitty Ussher: I am extremely happy to write to the hon. Gentleman and let him know exactly how many uncleared applications remain in the system. I can tell him, however, that this year we think that 40,000 more children will benefit; the number is already up 200,000 in the last three years, and the target is 790,000 children benefiting by the end of this financial year. We are also, of course, introducing a disregard for benefits claimants so that the whole operation of the child maintenance system will contribute directly to our child poverty targets—something that the hon. Gentleman's party did not even seek to influence when it introduced the CSA in the first place.

Topical Questions

Bob Spink: If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

James Purnell: The primary responsibility of my Department is to ensure that people keep on getting the support and real help they need to get back to work quickly. I continue to work to ensure that Jobcentre Plus is well placed to help individual cases and to intervene rapidly in cases of major redundancies.

Bob Spink: In light of that answer, which included the mention of work, and of the recession, does the Secretary of State agree with UKIP—and, since I see him in his place, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field)—that unsustainably high levels of immigration are actually causing problems for the future for jobs in this country? Does the Secretary of State agree that, with rising unemployment, we need to stem the growth in the number of EU nationals being employed in this country, which would also help us to keep the benefit bill down in future years?

James Purnell: It is right to have a managed system. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are bringing in a system based on the Australian points system, which will ensure that we get the best out of migration and the very important contribution that migrants make to our country. It sounds as if the tone of his party and that of the Conservative party are becoming surprisingly similar; perhaps he would like to go back and join the Conservatives again.

Natascha Engel: With rapid response receiving a huge amount of extra funding and a huge increase in demand, can my right hon. Friend reassure me that private sector employers are actually obliged to open their doors to rapid response? Will he ensure that the work of rapid response is promoted throughout the private sector to small employers who may not know what help it can give?

James Purnell: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we need to promote rapid response to small employers so that they get the help they need, and I am glad that she welcomes the doubling of the rapid response service. We want to make sure that we can help in any situation where there are 20 redundancies; the point is to get there and offer help as early as possible. The contrast is between a Government who are prepared to take real action now—we will hear a little more about that very shortly—and the Conservatives, who have come up with schemes that have fallen apart within 24 hours of being announced.

Desmond Swayne: Why has the Secretary of State chosen this particularly difficult time to hit the least financially sophisticated and our most vulnerable with his swingeing reduction in the period over which pension credit can be backdated?

Rosie Winterton: In actual fact, the changes regarding backdating fit into a general overall package that will mean that, from October this year, people will be able to find out their state pension entitlement, pension credit entitlement, council tax entitlement and housing benefit entitlement with just one telephone call. That is part of a package that has been generally welcomed by Age Concern and others. Overall, it will mean spending £250 million more in this area by 2050.

Mary Creagh: I wonder whether my right hon. Friend is aware of the website www.benefitshelpline.com, which is run by a company known as StealthNET, operating out of Great Yarmouth, and offers UK citizens benefit services for the price of £1.50 a minute on a premium rate call? Now that he is aware of this so-called service, will he take steps to ensure that legitimate UK Government paid-for services are privileged over this sort of thing on health search engines and internet search sites?

Tony McNulty: My hon. Friend has already raised this particular issue with the Department. We need to make it clear that the Department makes advice on benefits and a wide range of other entitlements easily accessible to everyone through a variety of channels, including information leaflets, telephone helplines, websites and intermediaries. The loudest message needs to be that anyone requiring help on any aspect of the DWP's work should go through those channels, not through premium-rate channels.

Chris Grayling: How much money is actually being saved as a result of the change to the backdating rules for the pension credit, moving from 12 months to nine months?

James Purnell: In fact, as the hon. Gentleman knows, in the medium term the package will cost money, because it allows us to pay for increased benefits for people. It has been supported by Age Concern, and I am surprised that he does not support it himself.

Chris Grayling: What is it about this Government that prevents them from ever answering a straightforward question? I asked the Secretary of State a simple question. This change affects a particular group of vulnerable elderly pensioners, including recently bereaved widows. How much money does the specific change from 12 months to three months actually save?

James Purnell: As the hon. Gentleman knows, it is part of a package that will cost more money. It allows us to improve the services that we give people, and it allows us to give more people more money. The real contrast is between his party, which wants people to suffer during the downturn and will do nothing to help them, and the extra help that will be announced very shortly and to which I am sure he is looking forward.

Jim Cunningham: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on saving the Post Office card account. What more can he do to ensure the viability of post offices?

James Purnell: My hon. Friend is right to say that we need to help post offices to offer as many services as possible to ensure their viability. As he knows, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform will work with Members to identify further such services that can be provided through post offices. I am glad that he agrees that we took the right decision. It demonstrates the support that the Government have been prepared to give to the Post Office—again in contrast to the Conservative party, which offered it no support at all.

David Amess: Given that this is warm homes week, are the Government aware that a growing number of people are complaining that they are not eligible for grants because they have part-time jobs, small savings or small pensions, and are not on benefit? Will the Government look carefully at the situation, and ensure that there are discussions with the appropriate Department? Many of the people applying for grants are truly deserving.

Rosie Winterton: It is important for us to ensure that those who are eligible for the grants receive them. As I said earlier, we are working with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to ensure that all who are eligible know how and when to claim, but I take the hon. Gentleman's point on board and will pass it on.

Alun Michael: I thank my right hon. Friend for his wise decision not to proceed with the proposed closure of the Jobcentre Plus office in Penarth. However, once proposals of that sort are somewhere within the administrative machinery, they have a tendency to re-emerge in the fullness of time. Will he take the opportunity in the meantime to ensure that all options are considered, so that there is a long-term and viable service, albeit not necessarily at the present level, for the town of Penarth?

Tony McNulty: It is a perfectly valid exercise constantly to look at a rationalisation of the estates base of Jobcentre Plus. As I said earlier, we are reviewing the options for the current 25 offices and will make an announcement shortly, but I agree with my right hon. Friend that we should keep the matter—and both its positive and negative aspects, in relation to the individuals concerned—constantly under review.

Adam Holloway: The Government claim to have virtually eradicated long-term unemployment, and indeed it is pretty hard statistically to classify it as such nowadays. However, plenty of my constituents are long-term unemployed, and in some cases the unemployment has lasted for generations. Do the Government really think that those people can be hidden away in numbers?

Tony McNulty: Let me say this very clearly: we will not take lessons on the long-term unemployed, the short-term unemployed or anyone in between from the party that did what it did in the 1980s and 1990s.

Ben Chapman: It was announced in February that the long-term unemployed who are seeking jobseeker's allowance would be required to undertake four weeks of work-type activity. Given the benefits that that policy could bring both to the claimant and the community, can the Secretary of State update me on its progress?

James Purnell: I am happy to be able to confirm that we are going ahead with that proposal. Indeed, we are going further: we will require people who have been long-term unemployed to work for their benefits on a full-time basis, to make sure that people have both the right incentive and the right support to get back into work. We want to support people back into work, to make sure they reduce their family poverty and achieve the benefits for their communities that that can bring.

Graham Stuart: Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) about the amount of savings brought about by cutting the time for which pensioners can claim their benefits, my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) asked the Pensions Minister how much that amount was, and was told that the information was not held centrally. Can the Secretary of State now confirm that he has been supplied with the answer to that question, and share it with the House?

Rosie Winterton: As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State confirmed earlier, by 2050 we will be spending £250 million a year more on pensioners as a result of the changes we are making on backdating.

James Plaskitt: I would like to see whether we can close a particular loophole in pensions law. A constituent of mine has been in a same-sex partnership for 28 years and he and his partner are now in a civil partnership, but were he to die, his civil partner would at present not get the same survivor benefits from his occupational pension as would a married partner. That is not equal, and it is not fair. Can we look at that issue again, to see whether we can achieve equality?

Rosie Winterton: I know that certain changes to the Pensions Bill have come back to this House from the other place. I will look at whether any of them apply to the case that my hon. Friend highlights, and I will write to him about that.

David Jones: Given the rapidly deteriorating unemployment situation throughout the United Kingdom, how satisfied is the Secretary of State that the regional benefit delivery centres have sufficient capacity to cope with the additional demands placed upon them?

James Purnell: We are very confident about that; we have been preparing for the past nine months. For example, the processing time for jobseeker's allowance is 10 days, which is down from our target of 11.5 days. I want to pay tribute to the people in Jobcentre Plus, who have been working overtime and opening on Saturday mornings to make sure we maintain the excellent service that Jobcentre Plus provides.

David Taylor: According to the National Pensioners Convention, more than 60 per cent. of pensioner couples live below the Government's poverty line of £151 a week, while the pensioner population is predicted to rise by 60 per cent. over the next 25 years. Is this not exactly the right time to bring forward from 2012 the restoration of the index link between average earnings and the state pension, and to combine personal tax allowances for pensioner couples? Would that not be a low-cost way of tackling pensioner poverty, and will the Minister slip that suggestion into the back of the Chancellor's notes now?

Rosie Winterton: I know how hard my hon. Friend campaigns on behalf of pensioners, but I have to say that were we to do what he suggests this year, the amount they would get would be lower, so this year is perhaps not the time to take such action. As he knows, we have committed to restoring the link between the state pension and earnings in 2012, or by the end of the next Parliament at the latest. Pension credit is, of course, already linked to earnings. I take on board my hon. Friend's point about getting help to the poorest pensioners; we have lifted 900,000 out of relative poverty since we came to power, and we will continue to work on that.

Patrick Cormack: Can the Secretary of State now answer the question that his colleague failed to answer, and tell the House how many workers have had their legitimate pension expectations confounded since 1997?

James Purnell: My colleague answered the question as set out on the Order Paper. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have been protecting people's accrued rights and it is this party that put in place the pensions regulator and the Pension Protection Fund, unlike his party, which provided no protection for people at all, despite the facr that the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), was warned during the passage of the Pensions Bill of 1995 to do exactly that. We have put in place that protection. We fixed the roof while the sun was shining, and that is why people can be confident about their occupational pensions going forward.

Pre-Budget Report

Alistair Darling: My pre-Budget statement today is made against a background of economic uncertainty not seen for generations. These are extraordinary, challenging times for the global economy, and they are having an impact on businesses and families right across the world. In these exceptional economic circumstances, I want to take fair and responsible steps to protect and support businesses and people now, while putting the public finances on the right path for the future That is what I will do today.
	My central objective is to respond to the consequences of this global recession on our country, both now and in the future, so that we are ready to take full advantage of the recovery of the world economy. My aim is to provide support and protection for families and businesses when they need it most; to maintain our commitment to investing in schools, hospitals and the nation's key infrastructure; and to put in place the measures necessary to ensure sound public finances in the medium term, so that as a country we live within our means. This is not one single initiative, but a comprehensive plan to support families, business and the economy. Because of the wide-ranging measures that I am announcing today and the many strengths of the British economy, I am confident that the slowdown will be shallower and shorter than would have been the case. I am also confident that the UK, as an adaptable and open economy, will be well positioned to benefit from a return to growth in the world economy.
	First, let me turn to my assessment of the international economy. Because of better macro-economic policy decisions and continuing, deeper globalisation over the past 10 years, global growth has increased from 3 to 4 per cent.; inflation has fallen from 22 to 4 per cent.; and living standards have risen sharply, with 300 million people across the world lifted out of poverty. But a crisis that began, as America itself has said, in the US housing market has seen these benign conditions undermined. The problems in that sub-prime housing market rapidly spread to the entire global financial system, causing a disastrous tightening in credit and undermining confidence. The Bank of England estimates that global bank losses could eventually reach $3 trillion—that is as big as the economies of Italy and Spain put together. Global shares have fallen by 50 per cent. since May.
	All this happened, too, at a time when the global economy was already suffering from unprecedented increases in energy, food and commodity prices. Those increases pushed up inflation everywhere, and added to the pressure on businesses and households. In the UK, inflation, although now falling, is still at 4½ per cent. In the euro area, inflation has been above the Central Bank target since mid 2007. In Spain, inflation peaked at 5.3 per cent., and in the US at 5.5 per cent. The result has been a sharp reduction in growth across the world: the euro area has been in recession since April; in Japan and Germany, gross domestic product has already shrunk by about 1 per cent. in the past six months; economic output is falling in the United States; and growth in China and India, too, has slowed sharply.
	This is an unprecedented global crisis, but the World Bank and other institutions are confident that the global economy will recover strongly, predicting that it will double in size over the next two decades, helping to spread prosperity across the world. The root of today's problems are failings in the global financial system. The banking system is at the heart of all economies. Financial markets affect everyone's daily life: if they fail to function properly, the impact is felt right across our economy and by every one of us, so restoring and maintaining financial stability is absolutely crucial.
	The causes of instability are global, so the Government's response must mean working closely together with other countries. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister and I attended the G20 summit in Washington. A wide range of measures was agreed to increase transparency of financial activities, ensure better international supervision and prevent excessive risk taking. It is crucial that this plan is implemented. So with the UK holding the presidency of the G20 next year, we will take the lead in doing all we can to prevent a reoccurrence of these problems. We will build on the work of the Financial Stability Forum, which, for some time, has been looking at international agreement on capital requirements that reflect the economic cycle and risk.
	Domestically, too, we need to make supervision and regulation more effective. The Financial Services Authority is now considering changes across the regulatory system—including banks' capital requirements, liquidity conditions, accounting rules and pay structures. The new chairman of the FSA will also examine whether the right processes are in place to ensure that the FSA can supervise the system.
	The current financial crisis has also illustrated two further issues. First, the recent financial turbulence has highlighted the potential problems with overseas territories and Crown dependencies, such as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands —[ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. You must be quiet, Mr. Fabricant. If I can keep you quiet now, I can keep the Government side quiet when the shadow Chancellor gets up. Best be quiet.

Alistair Darling: The Crown dependencies, such as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, attract banking customers with lower taxes—without contributing to the UK Exchequer. But at times of stress, depositors need to know who will compensate them. The British taxpayer cannot be expected to be the guarantor of last resort, so I have asked for a review of those regulatory arrangements, which will report to me in the spring.
	Secondly, we must resolve the situation highlighted by the Icelandic bank, Landsbanki, where billions of pounds of British savers' money was deposited in a foreign bank, with branches in the UK, with insufficient safeguards for those depositors. They were not adequately covered by the compensation scheme of the Icelandic authorities, so we had to step in to guarantee UK savers' money. So we are taking the lead at the European Union to tackle these shortcomings in international compensation arrangements. We cannot allow that situation to continue, and we have asked the European Commission to come back with recommendations by the spring.
	A strong banking system is vital to the health of our economy. It needs to be fair and open, offering a range of services and lending demanded by consumers. Because of the Government's action over the past year, no retail depositors in British banks have lost out. Last month, we took action to improve confidence in the banking system and recapitalise the banks. By next month, banks will have accessed some £100 billion of funding under the credit guarantee scheme. Now that the scheme is up and running, and other countries are beginning to implement their own schemes, it is time to explore how it can further support lending to families and business. We shall continue to monitor the working of the scheme and improve it if necessary. I shall announce any changes shortly.
	But we also know that the process to allow UK banks to raise money in the markets, through rights issues, is too slow and complex. Today, the rights issues review group, which I set up, has reported. I shall pursue its recommendations in full, which will make the process for raising equity capital faster and simpler. All these steps are aimed at combating instability, restoring confidence and improving protection for depositors, while defending the taxpayers' interests.
	Our economy cannot insulate itself from this global financial turmoil, but the UK economy faces these challenges from a position of relative strength compared to the past. Even today, employment remains near record highs. The claimant count, while rising, is 2 million below the level of the 1990s. There are still today over half a million unfilled vacancies in the economy. Government debt last year was among the lowest in the major advanced economies. At the same time, we have been able to triple public investment in key services, transport and infrastructure. We did fix the many roofs that needed fixing—the roofs of schools and hospitals throughout the United Kingdom. While all other major economies suffered recessions, we saw the longest period of continuous growth in the history of this country. That has brought immense benefits, and tens of thousands of jobs across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
	The UK is the world's leading financial centre, but because of the size of our financial sector we are likely to be affected more directly by a global financial recession. New lending has shrunk, down by a third since March. With mortgages harder to get and more expensive, this has hit property markets, with prices falling by 11 per cent. over the same period.
	Mirroring the big falls in the world stock markets, UK share prices are down by almost a third. These falls came as businesses and families were already having to meet rising energy and food bills, which squeezed incomes and led to lower spending on other goods and services. The combination of higher prices and tighter credit has inevitably put downward pressure on growth here in the UK and across the world. The volatility in prices was underlined last month when inflation fell from 5.2 per cent. to 4.5 per cent, the biggest monthly drop in 12 years. But while it is volatile, inflation is expected to continue to fall, and this has already made room for the Bank of England to cut interest rates by 2 percentage points since October, to a 50-year low of 3 per cent. For the millions of people on tracker mortgages, this cut in interest rates will be worth on average around £100 a month off their mortgage payments. But monetary policy—interest rates—on its own is not enough to stimulate the economy, as most people recognise. So we need action now to boost economic activity, together with the real help that I will announce today, to help us to emerge more more quickly, and to emerge stronger, from these difficult times and to face the future with confidence.
	I now turn to the detail of the economic forecast. These forecasts are made against a background of sharply deteriorating conditions across the world. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting a year-long fall in output next year across all advanced economies—;the first time that this will have happened since 1945. The UK is no exception. UK GDP contracted by 0.5 per cent. in the three months to September. Growth this year is forecast to be ¾ per cent., which reflects a further fall in output in the fourth quarter of this year. The IMF is forecasting that the United States, Germany, Japan, France and Italy—as well as the UK—will all contract next year as a result of weak consumer spending and business investment.
	I, too, am forecasting that output will continue to fall in the UK for the first two quarters of next year. But then, because of decisions taken in this pre-Budget report, I expect it to start to recover, and GDP growth for 2009 is forecast to be between minus ¾ per cent. and minus 1¼ per cent.
	Inflation is forecast to come down sharply, reaching ½ per cent. by the end of next year. Lower commodity prices and lower interest rates, which boost incomes and help business profits, together with the fiscal reaction across the world, will also help. As an open and flexible economy, the UK is well positioned to benefit from this recovery. As a result, and as the world economy recovers from the credit crunch, the United Kingdom's economy will begin to grow again. I am forecasting growth of between 1½ and 2 per cent. in 2010. In the years after that, the economy will continue to recover. Trend output—or the productive potential of the economy—will initially fall, but in future years the economy will recover towards a rate of trend growth of around 2¾ per cent.
	Every country in the world is facing the impact of this crisis on its own economy, but there is a growing international consensus—although unfortunately not shared in the House—that we must act now to protect people and to help pull our economies out of recession, for there is a choice. One can choose to walk away, let the recession take its course, adopt a sink-or-swim attitude and let families go to the wall. That is no action plan. Or one could decide, as I have decided and as Governments of every shade around the world have decided, to support businesses and to support families by increasing borrowing, which will also reduce the impact and length of the recession.
	I will do whatever it takes to support people through these difficult times. That is why my pre-Budget report today represents a substantial fiscal loosening to help the economy now with a £20 billion fiscal stimulus between now and April 2010, around 1 per cent. of GDP.
	Before I describe the detail of how the Government will support people, let me turn to the fiscal framework that will help us to ensure fiscal sustainability. The Government introduced the code for fiscal stability in 1998, committing themselves to conducting fiscal policy in accordance with a clearly stated set of principles.
	Our objectives are and remain to support the economy, to ensure medium-term sustainability and to maintain public investment. It meant that we were able to more than triple public net investment from 0.6 per cent. of GDP in 1997 to over 2 per cent. now. At the same time, we cut the Government debt from 43 per cent. of GDP in 1997 to 36 per cent. in 2007. Today, I publish the Treasury's assessment of the last economic cycle, which is supported by the independent National Audit Office. It shows that the last cycle started in 1997 and finished in the second half of 2006, and this means that the Government met both their fiscal rules over the last cycle.
	The average current budget balance, over the cycle, was 0.1 per cent of GDP. But today, Britain—like every other country in the world—faces an extraordinary global crisis, which means significantly lower tax revenues, both now and in the medium term. In the current circumstances, to apply these rules in a rigid manner would be perverse and damaging. We would have to take money out of the economy, making a difficult situation worse. So it is right that, in this pre-Budget report, we do all we can to support the economy, but also to ensure fiscal sustainability in the medium term.
	Consistent with the code for fiscal stability, the Government are setting a temporary operating rule that requires us to set policies to improve the cyclically adjusted current budget each year, once the economy emerges from the downturn, so that it reaches balance and debt is falling as a proportion of GDP once the global shocks have worked their way through the economy in full.
	The fiscal projections that I set out in this pre-Budget report are consistent with returning to current balance and debt falling as a share of the economy by 2015-16. They imply, as the economy emerges from the downturn, an adjustment in the cyclically adjusted current balance of over 0.5 per cent. a year from 2010-11, which will set us on a path to deliver our objectives of supporting the economy, ensuring sustainability and maintaining public investment. In addition, to increase transparency even more, I have asked the NAO to audit the Treasury's analysis of the cyclical fiscal position.
	I now want to turn to the forecast for the public finances. Because of the economic situation, tax revenues are falling across the world. As company profits fall, so do the proceeds from corporation tax. Receipts from the financial sector alone are expected to reduce by 35 per cent. this year. Slower growth in wages means less income tax. Fewer people buying houses and falling prices mean less money from stamp duty, where tax take is down 40 per cent. Because of the scale of these global problems, it is inevitable that tax revenues will take some years to come back up. That all means that borrowing will be significantly higher than forecast.
	As a result of the combined effect of lower revenues, our commitment to maintain spending and extra support to the economy, borrowing will rise to £78 billion this year and £118 billion next, or 8 per cent. of GDP. But then, from 2010, as I take action to reduce borrowing when the economy begins to recover, borrowing will fall to £105 billion, then £87 billion, then £70 billion and then £54 billion. By 2015-16, we will again be borrowing only to invest.  [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Alistair Darling: This means that the projection for the underlying budget deficit, excluding investment, will be 2.8 per cent. of GDP this year and 4.4 per cent. next year. But consistent with my commitment to sustainability and as a result of my announcements today, the underlying budget deficit, excluding investment, then improves, as a share of GDP, to 3.4 per cent., then 2.3 per cent., then 1.6 per cent. and 1 per cent., projected to reach balance by 2015-16.
	The economic crisis and the action by Governments across the world inevitably mean sharp increases in national debt relative to GDP—we will be no exception—but because we started from a stronger position, our debt will remain below that of other major countries. UK net debt, as a share of GDP, will increase from 41 per cent. this year to 48 per cent. in 2009-10, then 53 per cent., before peaking at 57 per cent. in 2013-14.
	If we did nothing, we would have had a deeper and longer recession, which would cost the country more in the long term. So in these exceptional circumstances, allowing borrowing to rise is the right choice for the country, as the CBI, the Institute of Directors, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the IMF and many other countries have all said in recent weeks.
	We will continue to invest in public services, just as we have done over the last 10 years. Investing in school or hospitals, or modernising infrastructure and transport links, is not just an effective way of stimulating the economy, safeguarding jobs and protecting incomes. It is also vital for the future strength and health of our country. We have seen in the past the long-term damage that cutting public investment has on the essential fabric of the country and the support that people need. Since 1997, we have doubled the NHS budget, cutting hospital waiting lists. Spending on education is 60 per cent. higher, improving schools and exam results. Transport spending is up by 70 per cent, with over 130 major road schemes, and record numbers now travelling by rail.
	Total Government spending on much-needed investment and public services has increased from £322 billion 10 years ago to £584 billion last year. Through the current spending review, we will continue to support and improve key public services, to meet the ambition of the people of this country. The challenge is to continue to deliver these improved services while ensuring that we continue to get value for money.
	Today I can tell the House that, since 2004, the Government have delivered £26½ billion of efficiency savings, exceeding the target set by Sir Peter Gershon by £5 billion. Building on this, in last year's comprehensive spending review, we committed to improve value for money, targeting a total of £30 billion by 2010-11, without putting public services at risk. But as the original Gershon report said, there is a point at which front-line public services would be affected—and we will not pass that point. However, having carefully considered the extent and the limits of efficiency savings, today I can announce that the Government will now find an additional £5 billion of efficiencies in 2010-11 for a total saving of more than £35 billion over three years.
	We know extra savings are achievable because independent reviewers have identified new efficiencies across public sector operations, coming through lowering the cost of back-office operations, better procurement, and examining property holdings and asset sales. By continuing to make efficiency savings, we can help to fund the action needed to help families and business, but we will also ensure that spending continues to rise from £584 billion last year to £682 billion by 2010-11. In the next spending review thereafter, we will continue to put money into public services and investment, to maintain the gains of the last decade, by increasing current spending by an average 1.2 per cent in real terms. As businesses and families across the country watch what they spend, it is only right that the Government work even harder to make savings.
	I now want to turn to a wide range of measures that I am taking to support the economy and the people of this country. They will help businesses, support home owners and boost people's incomes now. Bringing forward capital spending on major projects supports jobs and businesses, and I want to do more. It is right that, at this time, we reprioritise investment from within the existing three-year limits, so that more money is being spent now, when the economy is weaker.
	I can announce today that £3 billion of capital spending will be brought forward from 2010-11 to this year and next. That money will be used to increase capacity in the motorway network, improve and build new social housing, renew primary and secondary schools, and invest in energy efficiency measures. I have looked at these programmes in detail, and I know that they can be delivered on this revised time scale. It will put people to work; it will renovate infrastructure; and it will modernise schools and create more fuel-efficient homes. That is all vital for the future prosperity of the country, supporting jobs in key industries. It is only possible because I am prepared to take action now.
	This spending will help to put the money into the economy in the coming months, but to prevent the recession from deepening, we also need to take action to put money into the economy immediately. I have looked at a wide range of ways in which we might achieve this. I have decided that the best and fairest approach is a measure which will help everyone, including millions of households that pay no direct tax at all, and it is to deliver a much-needed extra injection of spending into the economy right now. I therefore propose to cut VAT from 17½ to 15 per cent. until the end of next year. This reduction will come into effect next Monday, 1 December. It will continue for 13 months before returning to the present level of 17½ per cent. at the beginning of 2010, by which time we expect the recovery to be under way. This temporary reduction is equivalent to the Government giving back some £12½ billion to consumers to boost the economy. We would like retailers to pass it on as soon as they can. It will make goods and services cheaper and, by encouraging spending, will help stimulate growth. Again, this is possible only because I have rejected advice to take no action.
	I am also taking additional measures to help people on modest, low and middle incomes. In May, I announced an increase, for this year alone, in the income tax personal allowance—a benefit of £120 a year for basic-rate taxpayers. I have decided to make that temporary tax cut permanent, and I have also decided to increase it to £145 a year in April. That will benefit 22 million basic-rate taxpayers. My announcement in May helped 4.2 million households that were affected by the abolition of the 10p rate, and this announcement will help another half a million households—not just this year, but for good.
	Along with those immediate steps to help businesses and families now, I am also announcing measures to ensure sustainable public finances in the medium term. I have considered a number of options to raise revenue in future years, and I have chosen those that are fairest and affect those who have done best out of the growth of the past decade. By 2011, we expect the economy to be recovering strongly, profits to be rising and incomes to be growing at close to 4 per cent., as they have done over the past decade. Today's pre-Budget report shows that the tax burden, as a share of gross domestic product, will fall from 36.3 per cent. last year to 35 per cent. in 2011-12. Against that background, I propose from April 2011 to increase by ½ per cent. all rates of national insurance contributions for both employees and employers.
	To ensure that the increase does not fall on those on low or modest incomes, I have decided, at the same time, to raise the starting point for national insurance to align it with that for income tax, so that no one on under £20,000 will pay any more national insurance contributions as a result. Secondly, those with the highest incomes have seen their earnings almost double since 1996, so—again from April 2011—I intend, only on income over £150,000, to introduce a new rate of income tax of 45 per cent. This higher rate of tax will affect only the top 1 per cent. of incomes.
	I also intend to withdraw the long-standing anomaly of the income tax system under which the personal allowance is worth twice as much to higher-rate than to basic-rate taxpayers. Again, I will protect those on middle incomes; this will affect only those earning over £100,000—that is, the top 2 per cent. So from April 2010, those with incomes between £100,000 and £140,000 will see the value of their personal allowance reduced, so that they get the same benefit as basic-rate taxpayers. For people with incomes above £140,000, I will withdraw the full value of that personal allowance. I also intend to maintain the ceiling on tax relief given to people with pension funds of up to £1.8 million until and including 2015-16.
	The reduction in VAT lowers the amount of tax paid on tobacco, alcohol and petrol. In addition, of course, petrol prices have come down by about 7p a litre since last month alone, so I will offset the VAT reduction by increasing those duties to an amount that will keep the overall cost to consumers the same this year. Of course, if we see a stronger economy and increased tax revenues— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the Chancellor speak.

Alistair Darling: If we see a stronger— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Robathan, I expect better from the shadow deputy Chief Whip.

Alistair Darling: If we see a stronger economy and increased tax revenues, we will review whether we need to take these tax raising measures, but I believe that it is right that, as we all benefit fairly from the exceptional measures we take today, we should all share fairly the burden of the future. Taken together, these steps will ensure that there is extra money flowing into the economy now when it is needed most, but we can reduce borrowing as growth returns. And as a result of my decisions today to provide support now and to balance the books in the future, I will bring the current budget back into balance by 2015-16: fiscal support now and fiscal sustainability both now and in the future.
	Small and medium-sized firms are the engine of our economy. They make up the vast majority of businesses and employ around 60 per cent. of the private sector work force. They also face continuing difficulties with cash flow and credit. I know that many profitable businesses are concerned that those twin problems threaten their future, and I want to help them. So, my objectives today for businesses are threefold: first, to help equip them for the challenges of the future; secondly, to improve access to credit and ease cash flow; and thirdly, to reduce burdens on them at this difficult time. I will maintain a focus on the long-term competitiveness of the UK, to increase our attractiveness as a base for global businesses. To do so, I will introduce an exemption for foreign dividends in 2009 for large and medium businesses, and improve our rules for taxing controlled foreign companies. To build on that, I have also today published an analysis of the long-term global trends impacting on the UK economy, and the Government's response to them.
	Small businesses need help to reduce their costs, and I have two announcements to ensure that they receive this help. First, to help small firms meet their running costs, I can announce a temporary increase in the threshold for empty property relief. From 2009-10, all empty commercial properties with a rateable value below £15,000 will be exempt from business rates. This exemption covers an estimated 70 per cent. of all empty properties.
	Secondly, at this time of real difficulties for many small businesses, they need time to pay when meeting their tax bills, and I intend to meet that need. From today, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs will enable firms facing difficulties to spread their tax on a timetable that they can afford. This will cover not just VAT, as some have suggested, but all business taxes—VAT, corporation tax, income tax and national insurance; and not for six months, but for as long as they need. That is real help when businesses need it most. I will also allow several hundred businesses in ports to spread out their payment of backdated business rate bills.
	We must continue to address the difficulty that many small and medium-sized firms face in getting loans. As part of the recapitalisation scheme, we agreed that banks receiving Government funding would maintain the availability of lending to small and medium-sized enterprises at 2007 levels, and I welcome the commitment announced at the weekend by Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the recapitalised banks, not to increase pricing on SME overdraft prices for at least a year. That will give security and reassurance to up to 1 million small businesses, and it should become the benchmark for all UK banks. We are closely monitoring the commitments given by banks to treat business customers fairly and decently, and I will take whatever action is necessary to make sure that that happens.
	We are also acting directly to improve access to finance. First, we have agreed a £4 billion deal with the European Investment Bank to provide money to the banks to pass on to small and medium-sized enterprises, and I can report today that seven UK banks have already asked the EIB for that money, and £1 billion will be available to their customers by the end of this year.
	Next, I can also announce that the Government are able to offer credit through a temporary small business finance scheme, and that is worth another £1 billion to small businesses. It should allow small businesses to borrow sums from £1,000 to £1 million on more flexible terms than before, making lending more affordable and easily accessible. That will help SMEs experiencing short-term cash-flow problems to get the funding that they need. We are also going to support companies that export, through the Export Credits Guarantee Department. From January, it will offer a temporary facility to support the availability of short-term working capital for smaller exporters, and that will mean yet another £1 billion worth of support to help ease the financing constraint faced by firms trading in the current difficult circumstances. So that is real support, quickly, for all types of small business, and it is possible only because we have made a deliberate choice to support businesses through this crisis.
	I have two more measures to announce to help business save tax. First, I have decided to defer the increase in the small companies rate of corporation tax that firms pay on their profits. That will provide a boost to small companies, leaving their tax rate in 2009 unchanged. Secondly, I want to support viable small companies that are finding it harder to make a profit at the moment. We already have a system of tax repayments, which are available to help those businesses, previously profitable, but now making losses. Currently, companies are able to offset losses only against profits made in the last year, but it is important to offer more support to businesses at the moment. So I am today extending this repayment scheme so that losses of up to £50,000 can be offset against profits made for the last three years. An estimated 75,000 businesses will benefit from this change, by receiving tax repayments. And of these, 90 per cent. will have their full current losses wiped out.
	This is a comprehensive package of support, which business has been asking us to provide. A package to support businesses—£1 billion-worth of tax cuts and £2 billion in loan guarantees, along with £4 billion of European money. That is a £7 billion package of measures—real help. It is funding that we can provide because we have decided to take action to support our economy through this recession.
	I believe that these steps will help businesses through their current difficulties and enable them to invest so that they can make the most of the opportunities that will arise when the global economy recovers. I am also determined that the present economic uncertainty will not push aside the importance of protecting the environment and our long-term needs for a greener and secure energy future. We are already on track to exceed our emissions reduction targets under the Kyoto protocol, and we are further ahead than all the other G7 countries. We have now increased our commitment for emissions reductions to be at least 80 per cent. by 2050—by far the most ambitious in the G7. Through the Climate Change Bill and the new five-year carbon budgets, the UK becomes the only country in the world where legislation sets a binding commitment to cut emissions. The Government will set out detailed proposals for meeting that new carbon budget, laid before Parliament in the summer of next year.
	Our climate change strategy is based on a range of policies—encouraging more fuel-efficient businesses and transport; better energy use at home; and targets for renewable energy generation. Central to that is the European Union emissions trading scheme. Last week, we conducted the first auction of carbon allowances in Europe, which gives firms the incentive to cut overall emissions. As the Government have demanded, aviation will now be included in the emissions trading scheme from 2012. That is a major step towards achieving our environmental objective of reducing the impact of aviation on climate change. It has enabled me to look again at our proposals for reforming air passenger duty.
	Last year, there was cross-party support for a reform of air passenger duty and converting it to a tax per plane. Much as I am in favour of a bipartisan approach, it seems in this case not to have reached the right conclusion. I believe that this proposal could harm the aviation industry at a time when it is facing huge problems. So instead, I have decided to reform air passenger duty into a four-band tax system, ensuring that those who travel further and have a larger environmental impact meet the cost. I believe that this will be a better and more effective way of reducing emissions from aviation.
	Improving insulation and energy efficiency will also help us reduce emissions, as well as cutting energy bills for families. In September, we announced a £6.8 billion home energy-saving programme. This is expected to lead to a 70 per cent. increase in installation rates for cavity wall and loft insulations this winter. The Warm Front scheme has already used its additional £50 million to help modest-income households get free energy efficiency measures. Today I can announce that I am providing an additional £100 million in new money and bringing forward another £50 million, to help up to 60,000 more households insulate their homes.
	The most pressing energy problem for many families is paying heating bills. We have already tripled cold weather payments for this year, up to £25 a week, for those on modest incomes. But I know that there is widespread concern that the fall in the price of wholesale energy has not been reflected quickly enough in reduced household bills. I can tell the House that Ofgem, the regulator, is to monitor price changes and publish quarterly reports detailing the link between wholesale and retail prices. Alongside that, if sufficient progress is not made in the next few months in closing gaps in pricing between payment methods, the Government will use statutory powers to end unjustifiable pricing differentials.
	Oil and gas from the North sea remain an important part of our energy supply. I am consulting closely with the industry over how, together, we can put in place the right incentives to increase production from marginal oil fields.
	The economic recovery must support our environmental objectives, and not come at their expense. Government policies will drive more than £50 billion of investment and activity in the low-carbon sector over the next three years. This year, we became the world leader in offshore wind energy capacity, but we must make even more of our transition to a low-carbon world. As part of our commitment to bring forward capital spending, the Government will invest £535 million more quickly on energy efficiency, rail transport, and environmental protection. That will mean more homes benefiting from better heating and insulation, better flood defences as well as 200 additional trains. That is one of the many steps we are taking to secure high-value green-collar jobs—a potential 1 million jobs in the low-carbon industries in the next 20 years.
	I have one further announcement in this context. Renewable energy, along with nuclear power, will play an increasing role in meeting our energy future. I can announce today that the Government will, therefore, extend the renewables obligation for an additional 10 years to 2037. By requiring energy companies to generate a share of energy from renewable sources, that obligation will underpin investor confidence and support the development of renewable energy. We are taking the right long-term decisions to protect the environment, to ensure low-carbon jobs, and to provide energy security.
	I also want to take steps to improve the supply of mortgages, to avoid repossessions, and to increase the number of new homes. Today, I can set out proposals to do that. The current problems in the housing market are a result of the credit crisis, which has drastically reduced the opportunities for people to get a mortgage loan. Last month, we took decisive action to recapitalise the banks so that they could maintain the availability of lending, including mortgages. Today, I welcome the publication of Sir James Crosby's report on finance in the mortgage markets. His principal recommendation is that the Government should support the mortgage market by providing, for a temporary period, guarantees for securities backed by new mortgages. I share Sir James's concerns about the availability of mortgage finance. To implement his recommendation, the Government would need to obtain state aid approval from the European Commission and resolve some of the technical and practical considerations. However, we will work up a detailed scheme based on his recommendations and seek state aid approval to proceed. I will also take into consideration the interaction between that proposal and the credit guarantee scheme, and I will report back by the time of the Budget.
	I am also setting up a new body, a lending panel, which will monitor lending both to businesses and households. It will bring together the Government, lenders, trade bodies, consumer groups, regulators and the Bank of England to monitor lending levels and practices by the banks. We intend to consider how else we can help to ensure that those in work but facing financial difficulties can remain in their homes. It is not just the availability of new mortgages that is a problem in the housing market; it is also fears about meeting the cost of existing loans.
	It is right in these cases that repossession should be the last resort, and I am pleased to say that this has been recognised by the lenders. The major lenders have agreed today that when someone is facing repayment difficulties with their home mortgage, they will wait at least three months after the borrower falls into arrears before initiating repossession proceedings. That will give many home owners time to work with lenders to find a solution. I also welcome the commitment, lenders to explore all possible options, including accepting a minimum payment, or mortgage rescue products, before and after home owners get into difficulty. It is also important that families worried about their finances and mortgages can get expert and impartial advice, so I am announcing today £15 million of new funding for free debt advice, available to everyone, regardless of their circumstances, and available across the whole country.
	I intend to take two further steps to help home owners facing financial difficulties. First, in September we extended the support for the mortgage interest scheme, which covers mortgage interest payments for those who have lost their jobs. Today I can announce that we will increase the upper limit of that scheme for mortgages up to £200,000 from the present limit of £100,000. That will, I hope, ease worries for home owners who have lost their jobs as they look for new employment. I have also agreed that, for six months, the level of interest rates covered by the scheme will remain, despite the recent base rate fall, at just over 6 per cent.
	Secondly, I can also announce new mortgage support for people in work. In September, we set up a mortgage rescue scheme, which is helping vulnerable home owners who face difficulties to stay in their homes. Today, I am extending that scheme so it will also cover those at greater risk as a result of taking out second mortgages. Together, that provides help against repossession worth £200 million.
	First-time buyer demand, and long-term housing supply, are the two essential cornerstones of the housing market. In September, to boost the market as a whole, I agreed £700 million of Government spending for new social-rented homes and shared equity schemes, and we agreed that they should be brought forward to this year and the next.
	Today, as part of the acceleration of capital spending, we will bring forward an additional £775 million this year and next to invest in thousands of new and modernised social homes as well as regeneration projects. Overall, this is a package of support for housing worth £1.8 billion—support that can be provided only because I have decided that we must act to give people real help. It will help home owners of today to stay in their homes, and help the home owners of tomorrow to buy their first home.
	As the economy slows, it is crucial that the Government minimise the impact of that on employment. Unemployment has started to rise and people's worries have increased about losing jobs and the difficulty of finding another one. I am determined to do what I can to ease those concerns and to help those who are made redundant move quickly into a new job.
	The evidence shows that the longer people are out of work, the more difficult it becomes to re-enter the labour market. Since 1997, we have made good progress on offering people the individual support that they need to find a job. We have halved the time it takes to find new work. Even as unemployment has been rising over the last three months, 1.2 million people have found new jobs.
	I have three proposals to make. Those facing redundancy need greater support. As the success of the rapid response service of Jobcentre Plus has demonstrated, support in the workplace in the form of advice on job-search, careers and accessing existing vacancies can make a huge difference to employment prospects. We will now further expand that service so that its work includes all redundancies, not just those at the largest workplaces. And to complement that, I will offer greater provision of pre-redundancy retraining through the Train to Gain scheme. We will also target the successful local employment partnerships not just on the harder to reach groups, but also on the short-term unemployed.
	There are still over half a million unfilled vacancies, and today I can announce a new initiative to help to fill them through national co-operation with the country's major employers. The national employment partnership, chaired by the Prime Minister, will involve 20 of the largest employers, including Tesco, Centrica and the Royal Mail, who have agreed to take part. Together, they employ over 2 million people. I welcome their commitment to work with us in speeding up recruitment, increasing vacancies through Jobcentre Plus and stepping up access to work-related training.
	It is the high-quality support provided by Jobcentre Plus and the new deal programmes to those out of work that has underpinned the success in the last few years in helping people quickly back into employment. I am determined to provide the resources so that the network can continue its excellent service, and I am setting aside additional funding to ensure that Jobcentre Plus and the new deal have sufficient capacity.
	Today's employment measures are worth a combined £1.3 billion—essential to prevent a temporary job loss from becoming permanent unemployment. Again, all of those measures are possible only because we have taken the deliberate decision to support businesses, protect jobs and help home owners. I have set aside £1 billion in the reserve so that we can continue to help during difficult times and ensure that we emerge from the current downturn stronger and ready to seize the opportunities in front of us.
	I can also announce additional help for people of all ages. Turning first to motorists, we rightly have a system of car taxation that takes into account the environmental impact from different types of car. In the last Budget, I announced that I was going to take this further by increasing the number of bands for vehicle excise duty.
	As planned, the differential first year rates, which people pay when they buy a new car, will be introduced in April 2010 because they give powerful incentives to provide less polluting cars.
	I intend to go ahead with the introduction of new bands, reflecting fuel efficiency, but it would be wrong to do this in a way that places undue burdens on motorists at this time. So I have decided to help people by phasing in new rates and lower rates of increase.
	First, in 2009, duty rates for all cars will increase by a maximum of only £5, as has been normal practice for a number of years. Secondly, from 2010, we will bring in differential increases in duty. In the original proposal, some cars would have seen increases of up to £90. Instead, I now propose that the more polluting cars will see duty increased, but up to a maximum of £30, and less polluting cars will see no increase, or a cut of up £30.
	For savers, we want to encourage those with modest incomes to put money aside. To help them, we are setting up a saving gateway, which will mean that the Government add money to every pound saved. From 2010, up to 8 million people on low incomes who put money into the saving gateway will get 50p added for every pound that they save. The saving gateway will be widely available through a range of banks, building societies and credit unions, and also the Post Office.
	I also intend to step up help for families with children. We have already announced that the child element of the child tax credit will increase by £50 above indexation next April. We have also announced a further increase in that credit of £25 above indexation in 2010. I now intend to pay both those increases together this April, making it worth, in total, £2,235 for modest-income families.
	The Government are also working with local authorities to improve further the take-up of tax credits and benefits, because they have a key role in working well with families to tackle disadvantage and to extend opportunities for children.
	We are introducing a child poverty Bill next year, which will set in legislation our historic commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020. I have already announced that child benefit, which was only £11.05 in 1997, will increase from £18.80 to £20 a week in April next year. We are supporting families as well as creating opportunities for all children.
	I also want to do more for pensioners. First, for pensioners on modest incomes, I can announce today an increase in pension credit in April. I will increase it from £124 to £130 a week for individual pensioners, and from £189 to £198 for pensioner couples. That is an increase above indexation—and the biggest increase in pension credit since it was introduced in 2003.
	I can also confirm that state pensions will increase in line with the highest rate of inflation this year. This will increase the basic state pension for a single person from £90.70 to £95.25—an increase of £4.55 a week. Now that inflation is expected to fall quickly, pensioners should see a real benefit.
	I do not want people to have to wait for this extra money. I want them to get it as quickly as possible, which will benefit them as well as the economy. So families will not have to wait until April to receive their increase in child benefit. Instead, they will start to get it in January—three months early.
	I want to do the same for pensioners. Pensioners are already getting the winter fuel payment—increased again this year. However, I want to do more. So I will ensure that every pensioner gets a one-off payment of £60, on top of the £10 Christmas bonus, from January. For couples, that figure will be £120, also paid from January. That £70 payment will also go to children with disabilities.
	In total, 15 million people will gain from the beginning of next year. We are helping pensioners, children and the economy.
	These are exceptional times and they require exceptional measures. They require action now to help people—and action now to help build a stable economy. We have made our choice. We are helping businesses and home owners. We are helping people into work and boosting incomes.
	All that is possible only because the Government have taken the deliberate decision to support people and businesses through these difficult times.
	I commend the statement to the House.

George Osborne: Listening to the Chancellor's speech, no one can doubt now that the Prime Minister's claim to have abolished boom and bust was one of the greatest deceits ever told to the British people.
	The Chancellor has just announced the largest amount of borrowing ever undertaken by a British Government in the entire history of this country. What he did not admit is that he is going to double the national debt, to £1 trillion, and that a national debt that has accumulated over centuries is going to double in just five years. That is the bill for Labour's decade of irresponsibility, initiated by the Prime Minister. To pay for it, the Chancellor has put in place a huge unexploded tax bombshell, timed to go off underneath the future economic recovery.
	The Chancellor talked about a 0.5 per cent. adjustment, but Labour Members did not understand what that means. It means that he is giving £20 billion in giveaways and taking back £40 billion in higher taxes, including the major rise in national insurance—a tax on the jobs and incomes of middle Britain. That is confirmation of the time-old truth that in the end all Labour Chancellors run out of money and all Labour Governments bring this country to the verge of bankruptcy.
	Stability has gone out of the window. Prudence is dead. Labour has done it again. Massive borrowing; rising unemployment; tax giveaways for Christmas, paid for by tax rises for life; giving with one hand and taking with another—everything that we have come to expect from this Prime Minister. He says that the recession will end halfway through 2009, but the tax rises will not come in until 2011. I wonder why he chose those dates. This Budget is all about the political cycle and not the economic cycle.
	Those borrowing figures are on a scale never before heard in the House of Commons. The £78 billion this year is almost double what the Chancellor forecast just eight months ago. The £118 billion next year is a record percentage of national income. He has added £512 billion to the national debt over the next six years—and by the way, that is based on growth forecasts that are vastly more optimistic than those of most independent forecasters. That means that the Chancellor is borrowing more on the nation's credit card than all previous Governments put together. Now the Chancellor is taking out another credit card, for, like the gambler who cannot give up, he still thinks that he can borrow his way out of debt.
	These are the excuses that the Chancellor has deployed. First, he claims that the recession has nothing to do with the people who have been running the country's economic policy for the past 10 years. "It's all America's fault," he says. What total nonsense. Was it America that gave Britain the biggest housing boom in the world? No. Was it America that gave Britain the highest levels of personal debt of any country in history? No. Was it America that gave Britain the largest budget deficit in the developed world? No. It was this Labour Government. No American politician said that they had rewritten the laws of economics. No American Treasury Secretary boasted that he had done away with the trade cycle and abolished boom and bust. It was the Prime Minister who said those ludicrous things, over and over again. He mistook a boom for stability and he never prepared Britain for the bust.
	The second excuse that the Chancellor made today was that he faces this recession from what he called a position of relative strength. Relative to whom? If he spoke to anyone other than the Prime Minister, he might find that his is not a view widely shared in the world. If he is right that Britain is better prepared, could he answer this simple question: why is the recession predicted to be worse here than anywhere else?
	The Chancellor reeled off a list of countries. Let me give him this list from the IMF. It says that Britain's recession will be more severe than those in America, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and every other major economy in the world. What about this list from the Commission? Britain's structural deficit is almost double that of France, three times that of Italy and more than 10 times larger than the deficit in Germany. The truth is that the Prime Minister built our economic growth on the pillars of finance, housing and Government spending, without once stopping to think what would happen if the pillars collapsed. He ran a huge budget deficit on the unstable premise that he could milk the City every year, and never considered what would happen to public finances when the money ran dry. He did not fix the roof when the sun was shining.
	That leads us to the third excuse used by the Chancellor today. He believes that the temporary tax measures that he has announced will deliver some huge demand boost to an economy that the Government have led into recession. Let us be clear that half of those measures are to compensate people for the Government's own 10p tax con and to delay the tax rises that he announced from the Dispatch Box just eight months ago. Labour MPs cheered the measures when they were introduced and now they cheer them when they are scrapped. I doubt whether the rest of the country will be so pathetically grateful that the Chancellor is going to wait a year or two before clobbering their family cars, empty properties and small businesses.
	As for the temporary VAT reduction, we will see whether it has the great economic effect that the Prime Minister expects. The Chancellor did not tell us that the German and French Governments have today ruled out a similar move because they do not think it will be effective. He did not tell us that already today many retailers are questioning the cost of implementing it and the impact that it will have on the high street, given that many shops are already selling things at 20 or 30 per cent. off. Borrowing money for a temporary cut when prices are already falling, and telling people that their taxes will go up to pay for it, is not much of a stimulus.
	What will make a difference are the massive new taxes on ordinary incomes and jobs that are just around the corner. The Chancellor got a cheer from the Labour Benches when he announced the higher top rate of income tax—no surprise there—but it will raise less than 5 per cent. of the black hole that he has to fill. It is designed to distract attention from the billions of pounds of extra taxes that are on their way for millions of hard-working families. Now we know at least one of those tax rises: national insurance, an income tax in all but name. The Chancellor did not give his figures, so I will: a £4 billion tax increase on families and jobs; more in tax for a qualified nurse, more for a police officer; £100 million on the annual NHS wage bill; £2 billion from British business. That is not just a bombshell; it is a precision-guided missile at the heart of a recovery.
	The final excuse that we heard from the Chancellor today was that, despite all the economic evidence of the past 40 years, Britain can borrow and spend our way out of this recession. Does he not see any parallels in what happened to Japan, which followed the path that he advocates and found itself saddled with debt and stagnation for a decade? The international bodies that he quotes in his defence have clearly stated that fiscal stimulus is an option only for countries with strong public finances. Perhaps this generation of Labour politicians needs to be reminded of what Jim Callaghan told them at a Labour party conference— [Interruption.] The Lord Chancellor was probably there.
	"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists".
	If the candour of the last unelected Labour Prime Minister will not do, we can listen to what the current unelected Labour Prime Minister used to say:
	"We have learned from past mistakes...you cannot spend your way out of a recession".
	It turns out that he has forgotten past mistakes, and now he is condemned to repeat them.
	The Chancellor could have taken a different path today—the path of radical monetary action and responsible fiscal policy. That is the right route out of a recession. Instead of boasting about the bank rescue abroad— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Campbell, try and break the habit of a lifetime and be quiet. While I am on my feet, Mr. Ruane, you are not so good either. I have seen you. Try and be quiet.

George Osborne: The hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) is very excited because he has his U-turn on the vehicle excise duty increase, for which he has been campaigning for so long. Unfortunately, it is coming down the track.
	Instead of boasting about his bank rescue abroad, the Chancellor could have made sure that he was rescuing the real economy at home. He could have got credit moving through the veins of the economy by telling us that he was directly insuring business lending—to keep small businesses going—instead of storing up tax rises for them in the future. He could have helped the private sector get back on its feet with properly funded help on tax bills and employment costs, instead of piling on them crippling debts and national insurance bills that will take ages to pay off. Instead of yet another phoney efficiency review while public sector waste runs rampant, he could have brought proper restraint and independent oversight to the way that public money is spent. He could have got a grip on Government spending so that in future the state would live within the country's means. That is what we would do and he would not. Instead he offers temporary tax give-aways paid for by a lifetime of tax rises for the British people, the national debt doubled and the future mortgaged to bail out the mistakes of the past.
	This is exactly the road Britain is now on with this Prime Minister and this reckless Budget. Far from being an action plan, it represents the greatest failure of public policy for a generation. It will make the recession worse because it will make the recovery more difficult. If Denis Healey had had to announce these figures, he would not have turned around at the airport; he would have kept going—but the right hon. Gentleman did not.
	When the Chancellor rises to reply, let him answer just these three straight questions. First, does he accept that the national debt will now double to £1 trillion? Secondly, does he have an explanation for why Britain is forecast to have the worst recession of any major economy? And will he confirm that families will be worse off because the tax cuts he announces are temporary, while the larger tax rises are permanent? I know that he will not want to answer those questions, but the choice at the next election could not be clearer. A record— [Interruption.] A record borrowing binge and a lifetime of tax rises under Labour, or fiscal sanity, and lower taxes that last, under the Conservatives.

Alistair Darling: The hon. Gentleman— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Alistair Darling: The hon. Gentleman is right about one thing: there is a very clear choice before the country today—and that is between a Government who are prepared to help people and help businesses and an Opposition who are prepared to do absolutely nothing to help.  [Interruption.] He was also right to say that we have chosen to take a different path. We have taken a path that will help businesses, help pensioners and ensure that everyone is helped through a reduction in VAT. At no point in the hon. Gentleman's intervention did he even mention pensioners or children or families. He had absolutely nothing to say.
	The hon. Gentleman then warned about repeating the mistakes made by Japan. The mistakes made by Japan in the early 1990s were precisely to follow the course of action that he is advocating today. I know that because a Japanese Finance Minister told me that those were the mistakes that his country made. You would have thought, Mr. Speaker, that at this stage of a Parliament, when we have seen countries all over the world recognising that action needs to be taken to support the economy, the shadow Chancellor would have had at least one suggestion to make to help people out of this difficulty. Instead, he has absolutely nothing.
	It appears that the shadow Chancellor is against the reduction in VAT. At least he has gone a bit further than the Leader of the Opposition, who was unable to tell Andrew Marr on Sunday whether he was for or against reducing VAT. The shadow Chancellor has nothing to say about the help that we are giving to businesses. Instead, all he is saying is that, faced with today's difficulties, which are recognised the world over, he is not prepared to take any action.
	In some ways, that should be no surprise. This is the shadow Chancellor whose judgment led him to back a call to get rid of mortgage protection regulation just before the problems arose in the housing market. He is the one who said that the International Monetary Fund would not support the idea of a fiscal stimulus across the world, only a day before the IMF said that that was precisely what was necessary. This is the man who said that the Bank of England could not cut interest rates because of our policy, just a week before it cut interest rates by the largest amount for many, many years.  [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must have order.  [Interruption.] Order. We must have order. The Chancellor is in order; if he were not, I would tell him so.

Alistair Darling: It is clear from all we have seen this afternoon that the Conservative party is reverting to type, and has absolutely nothing to say to help the people of this country to get through a difficult time. Yes, there is a choice— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Grayling, I have asked for order. I expect a Front Bencher to respect the Chair.  [Interruption.] Just shouting "Answer" is not good enough. That goes for the Conservative Chief Whip as well. He should be quiet as well.  [Interruption.] Order. If the Chancellor is out of order, I will tell him. I will tell him how to conduct his affairs if he is out of order.

Alistair Darling: Not only are the Conservatives not listening to anyone in the House; the problem with them is that they are no longer listening to people outside either. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Mackay, do not shout across the House.  [Interruption.] Order. We must have good order. The Chancellor has finished, and I am calling— [Interruption.] Order. Members should bear in mind that this was a statement put to the House, and that Back Benchers who are shouting will run the risk of not being called to question the Chancellor. So let us have good order.

Vincent Cable: Perhaps I may start with some of the positive points with which we can agree: the statement on repossessions, the action on small business lending, the programme for home improvement, and the postponement of the decision on retrospective vehicle excise duty.
	This is not a normal pre-Budget statement. We are experiencing a national economic emergency, and what is required, alongside radical cuts in interest rates and radical action on bank lending, is a serious tax cut concentrating on the low paid. The Chancellor has based his plans essentially on a temporary small cut in value added tax. I note that he is relying on the advice of a former Conservative Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), in that regard.
	What I fail to see is how the economy receives a major stimulus from, for example, a £5 cut in the price of a £220 imported flat-screen television or a 50p cut in a £25 restaurant bill. Surely it would be much more sensible to put money directly in the pockets of low-paid workers by cutting their income tax, rather than offering them a pathetic £25 and, if they earn over £20,000 a year, the prospect of tax increases.
	The Government have at last, after 11 years, acknowledged that there is a problem of inequality relating to the tax system. What they propose is a higher rate of tax for very high earners, after two years—possibly. What is needed, surely, is a comprehensive approach which involves cutting income tax for low-paid middle-income families and removing the vast plethora of tax reliefs and allowances from which the wealthy benefit, rather than this very limited fig leaf for redistributive policy.
	What I find wholly incredible about the statement is the assumptions that the Government make about the future trajectory of the economy. They simply assume that after one bad recession year there will be an economic recovery. Buried in the Red Book is the assumption that after next year, the public sector need make no contribution whatever to economic growth. However, the problem is a very deep one. This is not just a conventional recession. We do not just have the home-grown problem of the bursting housing bubble and personal debt; we have the imported credit crunch.
	As far as the banks are concerned, the problem is very deep. The Prime Minister tours the world, a little bit like a celebrity heart surgeon, lecturing the uninitiated on how to carry out financial heart transplants, but meanwhile the patient back here is suffering very badly, because the banks are cutting credit and greatly increasing their margins. I welcome what the Chancellor said about the Royal Bank of Scotland's announcement yesterday; that was a positive step. I do not, however, know whether he is aware that today Barclays, whose balance sheet is twice as big as the Government's entire public debt, is in the process of negotiating a deal with Arab investors on such extortionate terms that it is bound to make a drastic reduction in bank lending at the expense of its British customers. It is all very well for the Government to say that they are setting up a panel to monitor bank credit, but what is the Chancellor doing to enforce the conditions that the banks have apparently agreed to?
	I welcome some of the Government's comments on public investment, particularly on housing, but let us just consider the status of the Government's commitment on housing, with their £700 million programme of social housing. The Government have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Land is available very cheaply in the current market, and they could make a programme of large-scale social housing construction, meeting housing need and providing employment in the construction industry, but despite the rhetoric and the promises, virtually nothing is currently happening. It is not happening because the housing associations are loaded with bad debt that they acquired in dodgy deals with developers, and the Treasury is blocking any fundamental reform in the housing subsidy system. Nothing is happening.
	To conclude, we have a very serious national economic crisis. The Conservatives do not acknowledge it, so they do not propose to do anything. The Government have rhetoric, but the rhetoric is not matched by their actions.

Alistair Darling: Although I do not agree with a lot of what the hon. Gentleman said, his response was a great deal more thoughtful than the shadow Chancellor's.
	I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's welcome for some of the measures that we have taken, particularly in relation to repossessions, but our announcements on both VAT reduction and the extension and increase of the amount of money that will go to basic rate taxpayers will help people on low incomes through what are undoubtedly difficult times. The hon. Gentleman's proposal for reducing income tax also comes with a promise to cut public spending very substantially—by about £20 billion—which would impact on the living standards of the very people he is concerned about.
	On lending to businesses, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to make sure that we hold to account those banks in which we have shares. The Royal Bank of Scotland group has now agreed to take the Government money, and its announcement this weekend was extremely helpful. Assuming the Lloyds-HBOS merger goes ahead, that transaction will be completed in January, and we will need to make sure that they, too, are held to account. The additional Government help I have announced today of £1 billion being made available to small businesses is also important and will make a difference. The hon. Gentleman said that he wanted banks to do more, but although I agree with him on that, he does not seem to agree with us on the action we are taking to spend more to encourage businesses and to give them the money they need to get through this difficult time, including the measures I announced this afternoon to help them pay their tax bills and to help small businesses that are exporting.
	On housing, we are providing substantial sums to enable the building of more social housing, as well as to ensure the renovation of homes. Whenever anything is announced, the Liberals always call for more, yet it is not entirely clear how on earth they would be able to fund any of it given the fact that their tax and spending policies simply do not add up. I understand what the hon. Gentleman says, but I simply do not agree with him.
	I think that what we have announced today will go a long way. We are putting about £18 billion into the economy between now and April 2010. Such action is supported not just by a wide range of people in this country, but, increasingly, by countries across the world as absolutely essential, and the hon. Gentleman at least understands what the shadow Chancellor does not: many of the problems all of us face today are truly international.

John McFall: In these serious and profoundly risky global times—witness the fate of Citigroup, the biggest financial institution in the world, in the United States today—I welcome the financial stimulus, which is the only option, and, in particular, the social initiatives that will help families, vulnerable groups and businesses. I welcomed the £37 billion recapitalisation of the banks, whereby the Government guaranteed the debts and liquidity, but there is still pessimism in that market. Alongside the October statement came a credit guarantee scheme. Will the banks ensure that it is used further, with Government support, so that lending to businesses indeed takes place and that money circulates, helping jobs and communities?

Alistair Darling: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who rightly says that, in addition to everything that I have announced today, it is important that we ensure that the banks maintain their lending. I have said in this House before that banks sometimes fall over themselves to try to get customers in the good times, and they must understand that it is in their interests as much as everybody else's that they continue to lend to people when times are difficult. We need to ensure that we hold those banks in which we have shares to account. As I have indicated today, and as he said, the credit guarantee scheme involves a lot of taxpayers' money—almost £100 billion has been subscribed to already—and we are entitled to see the banks treat their business customers, and, indeed, their personal customers, properly. Banks need to be held to account on that, and they need to deliver.

Kenneth Clarke: Given that the Chancellor has turned to a temporary fiscal stimulus, as he was bound to do, because, as the right hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (John McFall) has just said, the bank rescue scheme that was announced a few months ago has not yet fully worked and is not fully operative as far as credit guarantees are concerned, so credit is difficult to get and very expensive, is it not essential for the Chancellor to ask two questions about that stimulus? First, is it affordable now? Secondly, will it be repayable in the short to medium term, so that we can rapidly get back to fiscal stability?
	In addition, does the Chancellor not accept that having set out the past state of the public finances, which is rapidly deteriorating as recession hits us, he should have told the Prime Minister that £20 billion-worth of additional fiscal stimulus was not affordable? When the Chancellor looks ahead and starts saying that even on his optimistic forecasts we will be borrowing £115 billion next year and £105 billion in 2010, does he accept that he runs the risk of the foreign exchange markets and the securities markets refusing to believe that that is credible and repayable, given the threats to sterling and the risk to the interest rates that he will have to pay on his bonds? This country clearly risks having a more severe depression than any other major western country. Does this reckless gamble not run the risk that it will eventually be worse still and that the recovery will be long and painful?

Alistair Darling: I understand, from what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said on Saturday, that he thought a reduction on VAT on a temporary basis would help the economy.

Kenneth Clarke: If affordable.

Alistair Darling: Yes. I believe that it is affordable. To put it another way, I share the view held by many that if we do not put this money into the economy now, the recession that we will face will be longer and deeper than it would otherwise be, and a greater cost will be borne, not only by the country as a whole but by every man, woman and child in this country. I am not prepared to take that risk. I believe that the Government have a responsibility to support people and to support businesses, and I believe that through the measures that I have announced today—substantial measures that will bring the budget back into current balance—it is affordable. The two objectives I had were to support the economy now and to ensure that we can live within our means in the medium term, and both those things are eminently deliverable.

Gerald Kaufman: May I thank my right hon. Friend for the announcement that he has made of enhanced investment in public sector building, which will increase still further the superb rebuilding of high schools and primary schools in my constituency? Under the Conservatives, those schools were so neglected that they were degenerating into slums. As the person who originally allocated the money for new build to housing associations under a previous Labour Government, may I also thank him for the money that he is putting into social housing, which the Conservatives also neglected and ruined? Together with the school building programme, that will—happily—increase employment among building workers in my constituency.

Alistair Darling: My right hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that what happened 20 years ago meant that many children were educated in schools built by the Victorians and did not have the facilities to which they were entitled. We all suffered as a result, and that is why maintaining public investment—especially in education, but also in other areas such as transport—is essential. The Conservative party has nothing to say on that, except to go back to the same policies that it was advocating in 2001 and, to a large extent, in the early 1980s.

Michael Howard: The Chancellor told us that if the economy performs more strongly than he predicts—however unlikely that is, we must all hope that it will—he will review the tax increases that he has proposed this afternoon. What will he do if recovery takes longer than he predicts?

Alistair Darling: I made it clear that we will, of course, review the position, as we would from Budget to Budget, but I have also made it clear that having put in place this fiscal stimulus—and recognising that tax revenues are likely to be affected for some time, especially because of what has happened to the financial services industry— we have to be prepared to raise revenue to ensure that we have sustainable public finances in the long term. I am prepared to take those decisions. There were two parts to what I announced today, as I have been making clear for some time: helping the economy, but also ensuring that we live within our means in the medium term.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. A considerable number of Members are hoping to catch my eye. We will all be helped if Members can restrict themselves to one question and put it as briefly as possible.

Frank Dobson: May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his decision to pump extra money into the economy? May I also congratulate him on targeting that money on the worst- off families and individuals? Putting money in their pockets and handbags is fairer than anything anyone else has suggested, and they are also the most likely to spend it and benefit the economy generally. That is in contrast to the Opposition Front Bench—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I hope that the right hon. Member will now put his question quickly.

Frank Dobson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that his proposals are better than a few shouted slogans from a Tory party that would do absolutely nothing?

Alistair Darling: I am inclined to agree. It is obvious from what we have heard this afternoon that the Conservative party has no answers to deal with the problems that we face today. I find that surprising, but that is the choice that it has made.

Michael Fallon: Will the Chancellor confirm that we will now be paying more in debt interest on all his borrowing than on the entire education budget? What kind of achievement is that?

Alistair Darling: Of course, interest rates are now substantially lower than they were in the past. The result is that the cost of the debt that we have is less than it would otherwise have been.

George Howarth: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the targeted approach that he has taken, which is a fair response to the world crisis and to the question of how to deal with it in our economy. However, may I disagree with him slightly? I am afraid that he is quite wrong about the Conservatives. They, too, have reverted to type and they do have a response: massive cuts in public spending.

Alistair Darling: I stand corrected.
	I might also say, in relation to the point that was just made by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon)—I knew I had the figures somewhere—debt interest payments were 3½ per cent. in 1997, and in 2010-11 they will be 2.6 per cent.

Alistair Burt: Will the Chancellor now answer one of the questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), which he shamefully avoided at the beginning of his response to my hon. Friend? Why does the IMF believe that coming out of recession this country will be worse placed than so many others?

Alistair Darling: One problem that we face is that we undoubtedly have the world's largest financial centre and, because of that, we are more directly affected in relation to revenues than would otherwise be the case. If the hon. Gentleman cares to look at all the IMF assessments, particularly the assessments that were produced earlier this year, he will see that they were extremely complimentary about the conduct of the economy over the last 10 years. The IMF drew attention to the fact that different countries are affected in different ways. I believe that we can be confident for many reasons that we will get through this, but one of the essential parts of that is ensuring that we support the economy now.

Chris Mullin: Although there is much to be welcomed in my right hon. Friend's statement, his announcement on empty property rates will not save a number of the companies in my constituency—and, I am sure, elsewhere—that are destined to be put out of business by that tax. Pallion Engineering, for example, is due to see an increase in rates from £55,000 to £277,000 in a single leap. That would put it out of business. Did the Chancellor not consider giving total relief from that tax in regeneration areas, as some of us had urged him to do?

Alistair Darling: I did look at whether the relief should be concentrated on regeneration areas, but the problem was that a lot of people or businesses who have empty properties in areas that are not in regeneration areas would be perfectly entitled to say, "What about me?" I introduced a measure that helped 70 per cent. of empty property, where people will not pay rates as a whole. Of course, we will continue to consider what other measures we can put in place to help businesses. My answer to my hon. Friend's question is that I did consider that option, but it would have created other unfairnesses of its own.

William McCrea: Will the Chancellor tell us what specific steps he intends to take to address the extortionate interest rate premiums that banks are placing on small businesses? Will he consider imposing penalties on banking institutions that are deemed to be working against the consumer and small businesses?

Alistair Darling: As I have said on a number of occasions, it is important that banks behave reasonably towards their customers. Part of the reason why we are setting up more intensive scrutiny of the banks is to ensure that if we see patterns emerging and if we believe that banks are reacting unreasonably, we can take appropriate action. The rest of Britain's banks could look at what the RBS Group is doing, because that might act as a model for other banks. They need to ensure that they treat their customers fairly, because they will rely on those customers for their business in years to come.

Dari Taylor: I most warmly welcome the statement. I particularly welcome the new tax on salaries of over £150,000. I think that my constituents will see the tax as a just tax, and therefore it will be a popular tax. Will the Chancellor reassure the House that that tax will be collected and that we will not find that people who ought to pay that tax will avoid it by having part of their salaries paid in school fees, thus denying the public purse once again?

Alistair Darling: I agree with my hon. Friend: I believe that the tax system needs to be fair. Many people who earn quite substantial sums in this country have done pretty well over the past 10 years, and it is right that they should meet their fair share. Yes, of course, I believe that, if people are due to pay tax, they should pay their tax.

Adam Afriyie: Does the Chancellor accept any responsibility whatsoever for the economic difficulties faced by people today?

Alistair Darling: The Conservative party, alone in the world, is trying to make out that, somehow, nowhere else in the world is affected by any of the problems of the past 12 months, but I have made it clear on many occasions that, over the past 10 years, we have built up an extremely strong economy. More people are in work. We have been able to do more to help people, particularly those who lost out in the Conservative years, and I have been able to announce more help today. Of course, I will accept responsibility for anything that I am charged with—but if the Conservative party wants to come up with solutions to today's problems, it might at least start by understanding what the problems are, and a lot of the problems emanate from the credit crunch.

John McDonnell: My right hon. Friend has announced a further £5 billion-worth of efficiency savings within the public sector. What calculation has been made of the job cuts that will result?

Alistair Darling: On efficiency savings, I find it hard to believe that a Government who spend—certainly, directly, if we set aside benefits and pension payments—more than £400 billion a year cannot find £5 billion by being more efficient. I do not think that any organisation can proceed on the basis that it is impossible to be more efficient. I am afraid that I disagree with my hon. Friend on that point.

Andrew Tyrie: Will the Chancellor tell us which, if any, of the immense problems that the country now faces today are home-grown?

Alistair Darling: I would have more respect for the hon. Gentleman if he or his colleagues could come up with a single proposal that would help people in today's economy. So far, not one of them has managed to do that.

Frank Field: May I bring the Chancellor back to the 6 million taxpayers who are still losers after the abolition of the 10p rate? Although I understand why he has had to find billions upon billions of pounds for City slickers who have got us into this mess, may I express my disappointment that the Government have not yet found the funds fully to compensate those lower-paid taxpayers who lost out with the abolition of the 10p rate? May I assure him that there would be tremendous support among Labour Members if he told us that, when he makes his Budget statement next year, he will be able to find those funds, fully compensate that group of workers and draw a line under that unhappy episode?

Alistair Darling: My right hon. Friend will recall that, when he and I discussed the issue earlier this year and when I announced the proposals that helped just over 4 million households, I wanted to return to this issue in the pre-Budget report. I have done that; we are now helping another 500,000 households. Of course, I will always keep under review what I can do to help people, particularly those who are on low incomes, but I am sure that he would recognise that I need to deal with many things in any Budget or pre-Budget report. However, I hope that he will accept that I said that I would come back to this, that I have been able to help many more people and that I will continue to keep the matter under review.

Robert Smith: Many of my constituents are beginning to be quite concerned about the future of the North sea oil and gas industry and exactly where the credit crunch is hitting highly geared companies' investment. The Chancellor said that he was considering ways to incentivise and increase investment in the North sea. May I emphasise the urgency of that? Will he give more indication to the House about how he is taking that forward and what time scale he sees for the delivery of such incentives?

Alistair Darling: I understand people's concerns, particularly with the oil price coming down. Although that has many welcome effects, it obviously has an effect on the outlook in the North sea. As the hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I met leaders of the oil industry in Banchory earlier this year. We agreed to work together. We are publishing further proposals today to allow us to develop such things further.
	One of the things that the industry told us is that it wants to work closely with us, because there is probably a coalition of interests: both of us want to ensure that we extract everything that we possibly can from the North sea. We said that we would work closely with the industry to ensure that the tax regime helps that process. I am glad to say that I believe that we are working well together, and I hope that things will come to a satisfactory conclusion as soon as possible.

Gordon Banks: I welcome my right hon. Friend's announcements on small and medium-sized businesses throughout the UK, but will he continue to monitor both the specific and the general effects that the announcements today, and his actions in recent weeks, will, and have had have, on the housing industry? Will he undertake to take necessary further action if he deems that it is important to do so?

Alistair Darling: Yes, I can give that undertaking. It is important that we recognise that the housing industry has been going through a difficult time. It is in all our interests that we maintain the supply of housing. The measures that I have announced today bring forward spending in the housing industry. We have made it clear to the Scottish Executive that if they wish to re-profile their spending, we would be very happy to talk to them. We have made that clear for several weeks now. If they want to do something similar, we will do our best to accommodate that.

Anne Main: Is the Chancellor seriously telling us that when we can get 20, 40, 70 per cent. off on the high street, and when there are "buy one, get one free" offers on houses and cars, the average hard-working family has simply been waiting for a 2.5 per cent. cut in VAT to press ahead and spend money it has not got? I do not think so.

Alistair Darling: I think that any family would welcome any reduction in prices that they can possibly get. If those reductions come through special offers from supermarkets or shops, that is fine. If that can be added to by a reduction in VAT, surely that helps as well.

Nigel Griffiths: Does my right hon. Friend not realise how welcome the cut in VAT is—the second major cut from a Labour Government, who cut VAT on fuel? Will he take no lessons from the Conservative party, which doubled VAT and imposed VAT on fuel, which hit every single family, and pensioners worst of all?

Alistair Darling: My hon. Friend is right. I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) is no longer here, because I am sure that he remembers only too well what happened when the Tories wanted to increase VAT on fuel. It caused them considerable discomfort.
	I just do not agree with the Conservative party. I think that if we can help to reduce household bills and put money into the hands of people on low incomes, that is precisely what the Government ought to be doing at a time like this.

George Young: The largest item in the Chancellor's package today is the £12.5 billion reduction in VAT. What percentage of goods on which VAT is payable are imported?

Alistair Darling: Of course it is the case that some goods are imported, but it is also the case that if people go into the shops and buy goods they might otherwise not have bought, that must be good for the economy as a whole.

Clive Efford: I welcome the business payment support service that my right hon. Friend is setting up. I spoke to the director of my chamber of commerce today, and he suggested something similar to this measure, by allowing the quarterly payments for VAT and corporation tax to be paid in monthly instalments. I urge my right hon. Friend to ensure that the service is an early intervention service so that small businesses do not incur huge bank charges and that they get the support to which he alluded. In addition, does it cause him any distress at all that the Conservative party changes its policy from week to week?

Alistair Darling: On the latter point, I think that most people have noticed that. On my hon. Friend's substantive point, it is important that if firms are getting into difficulties, the HMRC helpline is there so that they can get advice. If people are in difficulty, it is always best to contact Revenue and Customs as soon as possible, rather than wait for a problem to build up. That will be helpful, because it is important to help, especially small businesses, in the way that my hon. Friend describes.

Richard Spring: Will the Chancellor explain why so many OECD countries built up budgetary surpluses in the past few years and we singularly failed to do so?

Alistair Darling: If the hon. Gentleman cares to look at the position of most countries of comparable size to ours, he will see that most of them have had far higher debt levels than we have had. If his charge against us is that we spent money on schools, hospitals, roads and housing, I will plead guilty to it, but I remind him that the Conservative party usually called for us to spend even more money on all those things, not less.  [Interruption.] An hon. Member shouts, "Not true." If he looks back at the press releases over the years, he will find that, from time to time, the shadow Chancellor has had a terrible job trying to keep some of the shadow Ministers under control.

Nick Palmer: Some of the Conservative press this morning described today's statement as a gamble; does my right hon. Friend not agree that the biggest gamble in the face of danger is simply to do nothing?

Alistair Darling: I agree with my hon. Friend. Countries and organisations around the world, and many respected commentators in this country, have said that at a time like this, when the world is facing unprecedented pressure, and when we have seen a credit crunch the likes of which we have not seen for generations, it would be utterly irresponsible for Governments to stand back and say, "Let the recession run its course." I am sorry, but the view that we should let the recession run its course is not one to which I can subscribe.

Stewart Hosie: On the help for families, we welcome the VAT cut and the vehicle excise duty changes, but question why on earth the Chancellor wants to put petrol duty up at this time. On the help for businesses, we welcome the flexibility that he has introduced, and the one-year deferral of the small companies corporation tax rate, but notice that there is no change to the standard rate, or to the income tax paid by the smallest businesses that do not pay corporation tax. On direct public investment, although he is borrowing £300 billion over the next three years, he is only bringing forward £3 billion of direct public investment from the 2010-11 Budget. That is not new money; it is simply being brought forward. Will the £3 billion be subject to Barnett consequentials?

Alistair Darling: No, because the money is being re-profiled. As I said, and as the hon. Gentleman said, it is not new money. If, for example, the Department for Communities and Local Government brought forward money from its budget to spend it this year, rather than in three years' time, it would be difficult to argue that it was new money, and that his colleagues in Scotland should get a share of it. Of course, the Scottish Executive could re-profile their spending, if they wanted to. We have made that clear since September. As of a couple of days ago, no such request has been made, but if they would like to make such a request, that would be eminently sensible. It would be much supported by people in Scotland. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should pass the message on to the right hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), who might want to consider it in the course of his busy day.
	In relation to fuel duty, I said that we have reduced VAT on fuel, but I am increasing duty on it, so that the effect will be as though there was no reduction in fuel duty. What people pay is remaining exactly the same, because I am taking account of the fact that petrol and diesel prices have fallen quite a lot, even in the last month or so. We are not allowed to have a large number of differential VAT rates, so that is the only way in which I can maintain the status quo, which is what I have done.

Gordon Prentice: This is warm homes week, and it is freezing cold in Pendle, so I welcome the additional £100 million announced, but will the Warm Front programme be able to gear itself up and deliver a measurable increase in activity this winter, so that people see the benefit of that money?

Alistair Darling: I hope so. I hope that the relevant Secretaries of State will be able to ensure that that is precisely what happens.

John Redwood: In his speech, the Chancellor said that this year's borrowing would be £78 billion, but the Budget book tells us that central Government need to borrow £153 billion this year—£93 billion more than at the Budget forecast. As he believes in transparency, why did he leave out so much of the borrowing?

Alistair Darling: I gave the House the borrowing figures, as the House would expect. I am also laying before the House the pre-Budget book. It is all there, and I am happy for hon. Members to look at it. Equally, I would be happy to listen to proposals from Conservative Members. The only proposal that I recall from the right hon. Gentleman recently related to the deregulation of the mortgage market, which I do not think would be a very good idea.

Andrew Love: Has my right hon. Friend taken the opportunity, through the Treasury's model of the economy, to crunch the numbers on doing nothing? I am thinking about lost output, the implications for employment and, indeed, the implications for the public finances of not doing anything.

Alistair Darling: I have not done that, but I did notice that the chairman of the CBI said this morning that
	"this fiscal stimulus is going to cost the Government less than doing nothing because of the impact on unemployment".
	I happen to agree with him.

David Heath: The Chancellor appears to have completely abandoned the normal purdah before budgetary announcements, with the result that the VAT cut was the least unexpected announcement almost ever. But, if the purpose of the VAT cut was to put more money into the pockets of less well-off people, would not a targeted cut in income tax have done it better? If the purpose is to stimulate spending in our high streets, how is a 2.5 per cent. VAT cut going to work when 20 per cent. to 25 per cent. discounting in all major stores is not?

Alistair Darling: As I said a few moments ago to the hon. Member for St. Albans (Anne Main), any price reduction would be welcomed by people going out to shop, and I have actually reduced income tax, especially for basic rate taxpayers, because I am introducing the increase in the personal allowance. Income tax personal allowances take time to be fully implemented; a cut in VAT can be implemented much more quickly.

Rob Marris: In what way will the welcome measures in the pre-Budget report assist manufacturing, which is so important in the west midlands and elsewhere?

Alistair Darling: In two ways, I believe. First, the general impact of putting £18 billion into the economy between now and 2010 will help the economy generally. It helps in terms of confidence and general outlook. The fact that the Bank of England has been able to reduce interest rates to 3 per cent., the lowest that they have been since the 1950s, will also help businesses, because many of them borrow, which is why it is important that we ensure that banks pass on their interest rates.
	The measures that I announced today include the fund to help small firms at better rates than before so that they can borrow between £1,000 and £1 million, and measures for manufacturers that are exporters. There are many smaller firms in the west midlands and in other parts. Indeed, I have visited a number of small firms in the west midlands that export extremely successfully, and additional help is available in the guarantee. Those are just a few examples of how we can help, but, of course, we will need to do other things, too.

John Baron: The Government have not denied that, after this pre-Budget report, they will have borrowed more than all previous Governments combined. Given that the tax increases that the Chancellor announced today represent only a small fraction of the moneys needed to plug the black hole that he has created, will he at least admit that he may be forced to consider further tax increases, particularly if the recovery takes longer to come through than expected?

Alistair Darling: Today, I set out proposals that involve additional spending now to support the economy, but I also set out proposals—they are laid out in the pre-Budget report papers that were also published today—for how we will get our economy back into current balance so that we can live within our means in the medium term.

David Anderson: It is obvious from the speech by the shadow Chancellor that his attitude is the same as that which his party took when in government in the past, and when millions of people like myself were made redundant. This is not just a discussion about economics; it is about the social fabric of this country. Can I ask the Chancellor to ensure that, whatever he does over the next period, he does not use the terms, "Unemployment is a price worth paying," or, "If it is not hurting, it is not working"?

Alistair Darling: My hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point, because many people in this country remember what happened in communities up and down the country in the early 1980s and the early 1990s, when people lost their jobs, went on to unemployment benefit, then on to incapacity benefit and never went back to work again. I know that he represents just such an area, and the indifference and the uncaring attitude struck by the Conservative party has left scars there and in many parts of the country that it has taken years to get over.
	I agree with my hon. Friend— [ Interruption. ] And I profoundly disagree with the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley), who shouts from a sedentary position. I cannot believe that the Conservatives want to get themselves into that situation—to ignore the problems faced by many of our citizens, who expect their Government to act for them. I find that very hard to believe.

Andrew MacKay: The shadow Chancellor asked three very specific questions. Why did the Chancellor not even attempt to address any of them? Will he put the matter right now by at least answering one? Does he accept that the national debt will now double?

Alistair Darling: I thought that most of what the shadow Chancellor was getting at made it very clear that he had absolutely no plans, no policies and no approach to deal with the problem that we have at the moment. I have set out the country's position in relation to debt. We did reduce debt over a 10-year period. The debt will rise now, but I believe that that is necessary because we have to ensure that we support the economy and the people who send us here. They expect Governments, and politicians on both sides of the House, to show some concern about the problems that they face. I am prepared to face up to that; I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not.

Mark Lazarowicz: I share my right hon. Friend's disappointment at the fact that the Scottish Government have not yet approached the Treasury to re-profile their spending in the way that he has suggested; we can only assume that the First Minister has been too busy in Fife in the past few weeks. I invite my right hon. Friend to join me in urging the Scottish Government to make such an approach now. I want to make sure that my constituents, my right hon. Friend's and those of other MPs in Scotland get the same benefit from an infrastructure boost as will apply to the rest of the country as a result of the measures announced today.

Alistair Darling: Given that the First Minister of Scotland has at his disposal nearly double what our late colleague Donald Dewar had only eight years ago, one would have thought that he could make sure that he, too, was helping the economy in Scotland. I see that the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie), who speaks for the Scottish National party on these issues, is no longer in his place. Perhaps he has gone to phone the First Minister to find out what he is doing.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. We must now proceed to the main business.

Points of Order

David Laws: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker— [Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Will Members leaving the Chamber please do so quickly and quietly, so that I can hear the point of order?

David Laws: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will be aware of the confusion, caused by the statement by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in this place last Thursday, about access to the serious case review in the case of Baby P.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Has the hon. Gentleman informed the Secretary of State about the comment that he is about to make?

David Laws: I have, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will also be aware that on Friday morning the Information Commissioner released a statement distancing himself from the impression given by the Secretary of State's statement; the commissioner followed that up with a letter published today in  The Times. May I ask you what can be done to encourage the Secretary of State to clarify the confusion and approach the commissioner to establish whether a copy of the serious case review can now be made available to the public—with the relevant personal information removed, if necessary?

Madam Deputy Speaker: Ministerial replies are, of course, the responsibility of the Minister in question, and certainly not of the Chair. What the hon. Gentleman has said is now on the record, and I think that that will lead to the clarification that he seeks.

Peter Bone: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chancellor's statement was widely reported in the media before it was made. Will you advise on whether the statement should have been kept secret and given to Members first?

Madam Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has heard Mr. Speaker make comments about such issues in the past. I certainly do not know who was responsible for the leak, but it is clear that Mr. Speaker and the other occupants of the Chair like statements to be made here first.

PLANNING BILL (PROGRAMME) (No. 4)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A(7) (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Planning Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 10th December 2007, 2nd June 2008 and 25th June 2008 (Planning Bill (Programme), Planning Bill (Programme) (No. 2) and Planning Bill (Programme) (No. 3)):
	 Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement at this day's sitting.
	2. The Lords Amendments shall be considered in the following order, namely Nos. 115, 160, 1 to 114, 116 to 159, 161 to 217.
	 Subsequent stages
	3. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	4. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.— [Mr. Frank Roy.]
	 The House divided: Ayes 279, Noes 228.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Orders of the Day

Planning Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I must draw the House's attention to the fact that privilege is involved in Lords amendments Nos. 25, 65, 76, 100, 109 and 117 to 163. If the House agrees to any of these amendments, I shall ensure that the appropriate entry is made in the Journal.
	After Clause 194
	 Lords amendment: No. 115.

John Healey: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
	It is a pleasure to see Opposition Front Benchers back in their places for the debates on the Bill as it moves into its final stages. We are missing the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), who is at home after the birth of his third child. He is hardly old enough to have three children, but we wish him well—I understand that all is well.
	Their Lordships have sent us an amendment to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to ensure that those who exercise planning functions have special regard to the preservation of gardens, groups of gardens or urban green spaces. I hope that I can explain to the House not only why the amendment should be rejected, but the steps that we propose to take to ensure that we examine properly the concerns that have been raised.
	As my noble Friend Baroness Andrews said in the other place last week, and as was pointed out when this House debated the issue a couple of years ago, both on an Opposition motion and in relation to a Bill that the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) introduced—it is good to see her in her place, as she has long had an interest in such issues—local authorities can already set out strong and specific local policies in their local development frameworks to protect gardens in particular areas, if that is desirable and appropriate. In our planning policy statement 3, on housing, which was published in November 2006, we strengthened local authorities' hand in doing just that.

Michael Fabricant: Will the Minister give way?

John Healey: I thought that the hon. Gentleman was in his normal place on the Front Bench, but should be delighted to give way to him now that he has moved to the Back Benches.

Michael Fabricant: I am interested in what the Minister said about the regulations already being in place. When there are instances of garden grabbing in my constituency, Lichfield district council says that they are out of its hands. The council says that it is directed by regional policy and national policy guidance and has no choice but to allow gardens to be used for building, because they are regarded as brownfield sites. Is the Minister saying that the council and, more importantly, the National Association of Local Councils are wrong on that point?

John Healey: I was in the middle of saying that if the hon. Gentleman encourages his local authority to look hard at PPS3—indeed, he might want to ask why the council has not seen it before—it will see that it can set individual brownfield targets that apply only to back gardens, effectively separating them from other derelict land and other forms of brownfield and vacant sites.

Bob Spink: The Minister is being characteristically generous in giving way again. Notwithstanding PPS3 guidance, does he not acknowledge that many councils, including Castle Point, have given away far too many gardens in the dash for flats? We are seeing massive flat developments being built without any garden space at all, but these turn out to be unsaleable in the end, thereby destroying our urban communities.

John Healey: I do not know in detail what the hon. Gentleman's council in Castle Point has done, and cannot speak for it. However, he might want to ask his local authority why it is not taking full advantage of the planning system, as some are, by making back gardens a special feature of its policy, as part of its ability to make finely graded distinctions in the general category of brownfield land.

Richard Benyon: In case the planners in west Berkshire are watching this, let me give vent to their feelings by asking the Minister this. If the planners refuse applications, as they frequently do, to build high-density units on gardens when such developments would be inappropriate in certain areas, they are then overrruled on appeal, with the inspector citing national policy. That is the problem right up and down the country. Is the Minister saying that I, the planners in west Berkshire and everybody who is experiencing that are wrong?

John Healey: No, I am not. However, if councils use the scope of their existing powers to make it clear in their planning and housing objectives that back gardens should be treated in a particular way, they should expect their approach to command support should an appeal arise. The starting point is the extent to which local authorities choose to use the scope of the powers that are currently available to them.
	If the hon. Gentleman is concerned about the situation in West Berkshire, perhaps he should have a word with the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), who leads the Conservative Front-Bench team, because Brentwood's local plan is one of the best examples of a local authority taking advantage of the provisions and scope of the PPS3. It has specific policies that reflect local circumstances, such as that any new development should reflect the character and density of the surrounding area and should have minimum net plot sizes and minimum building-line frontages. So a council that recognises what it can do has set its policy framework accordingly. If concerns of this nature arise in that area, it should be able to deal with them much more effectively than other local authorities. The hon. Gentleman might suggest that West Berkshire take a leaf out of Brentwood council's book.

Susan Kramer: My council has been attempting to strengthen its language under the unitary development plan. Is the Minister aware that it has been told that the language is already as strong as it could possibly be, and that if it does anything more it will be overturned by the inspectorate, and the UDP will have to be revised? None of that has stopped developers running a guerrilla war, constantly attempting to buy every house with a sizeable garden in order to put massive and complex developments on them. Applications are often turned down on appeal, but developers will persist three, four or five times until the wretched developments eventually go through.

John Healey: I have no idea what the precise wording of the hon. Lady's local planning policy framework is, and she has not quoted it, so I cannot give her a judgment on that. However, in a moment I shall come to the question in my mind about the nature of the evidence supporting the sort of concern that she has expressed. She has given an anecdotal example of a problem that she sees in her area. Let me make a little progress, and if she wants to come back to this point, I shall give way again.

Greg Clark: On PPS3, does the Minister accept that it might be appropriate for councils to take case-by-case decisions on gardens, rather than to have blanket policies that cover the whole borough? Not every garden needs to be preserved in aspic. It might be appropriate to consider each application on its merits and to make decisions in that way. Nothing that the Minister has said allays our concerns as to whether any council that tried to do that would have its decisions overturned on appeal.

John Healey: The principle and practice of the planning system are that each application is considered on its merits in the context and framework of planning policies set by the planning authority. Those policies are produced within the context of guidance that we give from the centre. There is already considerable scope within the system for local planning authorities to equip themselves, as part of their ambition in their planning policies, to deal with any concern about garden grabbing in their area, but most authorities are not fully using that scope. Local authorities have the power to turn down applications for inappropriate housing in back gardens. Provided that the supply of land is maintained and the proposed development is in line with a council's planning for housing objectives, it can resist garden development and can expect support on appeal.
	Let me return to the issue of evidence. Unless the House hears this afternoon about fresh evidence that I have not come across, there is no clear evidence of a problem that needs the proposed solution. In the other place, the Opposition spokesperson talked about a survey of six local authorities, and I have tried hard to find details of that survey. I am not sure whether it has been published, but if it has, I have not been able to get a copy of it. On the basis of that survey, it has been said that 72 per cent. of all brownfield site development has been on back gardens, but that figure is way out of line with our published, comprehensive and publicly scrutinised figures for that sort of development. Our published figures on the amount of development on previously developed land show that the percentage of all new housing built on back gardens across England is not 72 per cent. but just under 27 per cent. There is huge inconsistency between those figures, but I have been unable to take a close look at the results of that small survey, because I cannot find a published copy of it.

Julia Goldsworthy: One half of the amendment puts forward proposals to define green space as being separate from other brownfield land. Would that classification not make it easier to assess the amount of development on gardens and elsewhere?

John Healey: But does the hon. Lady not accept the general proposition that legislation should be based on good policy, which, in turn, needs to be based on sound evidence? At the moment, that evidence is not clear, so the case for a change in policy, let alone a change in legislation, has not been established.

Greg Clark: Will the Minister help us with the evidence that he mentions? He will understand that, within regional and national totals, different authorities will be higher or lower than the average. In the past three years, I have tabled parliamentary questions asking for specific figures for each local authority for the previous year. In the first two years, my questions were answered, but this year his Department has declined to give me that information because it said that it would be misleading. Will he put the information in the Library so that we can have a consistent series of answers?

John Healey: I suspect that the answers that the hon. Gentleman has received so far have not been in my name, but I shall look into whether there is an inconsistency or concern about data for the most recent year compared with those for the two previous years. Either my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing or I will write to him on that.
	The hon. Gentleman asked whether I could help regarding the evidence. I am trying to be as helpful as possible to the House, and I do not have a closed mind on this, but the evidence on which to base policy decisions, let alone legislative changes, is not yet clear or available. Early in the new year, we will review the evidence on the extent of development on back gardens in order to establish whether there is a genuine problem. If there is, we will take action to remedy the situation.

Susan Kramer: I thank the Minister for taking the positive approach of reviewing the problem. Will he consider the issues not only at national and regional level but at local level, because constituencies such as mine, where land is very valuable because houses are highly priced, are a particular target of developers? Looking at broad areas of the country, one might not find the problem, but if one looked at the specifics of some of my communities, one would find that developers bid at almost every opportunity when a single house with any reasonable amount of garden is being sold. My great fear is that in the recession, when many people will not have cash but developers will, a set of locusts will be going after all those opportunities.

John Healey: The hon. Lady's question can be boiled down to asking whether our review will examine the evidence in local authority areas. Yes, of course it will.
	I look forward to hearing from the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait), because I am concerned that we too often see Tory councils and members of the Conservative party arguing about housing and housing numbers. That leads me to suspect, if I am honest with the House, that behind this amendment lies a serious rejection of our obligation to provide new housing for new generations. If the hon. Member for Beckenham can convince the House that that is not the case, I would welcome it, but too often the evidence from her own councils and her own colleagues has been to the contrary.

Bob Neill: Before I leave the right hon. Gentleman to the tender mercies of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait), can he help me on this matter? Given the Minister's surprising and uncharacteristic degree of cynicism, how does he square what he said with the statement of his ministerial colleague Baroness Andrews, who said in the other place:
	"We support the underlying aim of the amendment."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 12 November 2008; Vol. 705, c. 694.]?
	If the Government support the underlying aim, it cannot be logical to suggest that it comes from some motive to prevent excessive development.

John Healey: I think scepticism rather than cynicism is a proper description of my attitude. As I am trying to explain, the Government do not have closed minds on this issue, but we are first looking for firm evidence that there is a problem to which we need a solution in the form of change in policy; and secondly, in the light of what I just said, I am making it clear that we would be prepared to change our policy only if we were convinced that that would not also undermine our objectives on housing.

Caroline Spelman: On the question of evidence, I welcome the announcement that the Government will review the impact, but will the Minister take important facts into consideration? The 27 per cent. average national figure he cites for building on previously developed land disguises the fact that during the last few years, because of a boom in house prices, there has been a significant increase in the number of houses built. It is a combination not just of the percentage, but of the sheer numbers built on backland. My own local authority has seen a doubling of the number of houses built, as well as an increase in the percentage of building on formerly developed land. Perversely, where gardens exist, that has led to meeting housing targets in areas of high land value ahead of schedule. Solihull metropolitan borough council met its target for 2011 by 2006.

John Healey: The hon. Lady is right, and it is a record that we have been proud of in recent years. From a low in 2001, we have reversed what had been a year-on-year decline in house building for 15 years before that. We are pleased and proud to see more houses built; we need more houses in this country. My response to the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) is that if the contribution of development on brownfield sites, which could include back gardens in some areas, is relatively stable, I fail to see the strength of the argument for saying that this is an urgent and pressing problem, particularly in the absence of any firm evidence to the contrary.

Several hon. Members: rose —

John Healey: I give way first to the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) because he has been in his place from the start of the debate. I will then give way to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who has just arrived. After that, I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell).

Bob Spink: The Minister mentioned housing targets, and I think that he was a little cynical about them. The evidence from my region in the Thames corridor is that there is sufficient brown land—previously developed land—available to meet all the Government's housing targets, but that it is has not stopped green land in my constituency coming under pressure. The reason for that is that developers can make a lot more money by developing back gardens and green land in my constituency. Will the Minister get the Government to focus on their target of protecting green belt, green land and back gardens by forcing development into the brown land in the Thames corridor?

John Healey: I recognise the hon. Gentleman's point, so I invite him to submit evidence from his local area to the review that, as I have confirmed to the House, will start in the new year. That may or may not help to build up the evidence base on which consideration of any policy change could be considered.

John Redwood: As we have just heard a pre-Budget report that turned out to be a Budget with an urgent and big tax change, will the Minister give us guidance from the Treasury Bench on how soon we will be able to debate and vote on the huge VAT change? It is very unusual to have a Budget, yet not be able to proceed to a Division on it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not see the relevance of that point to the motion before the House.

Peter Lilley: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) none the less raises an important point on which I would like your guidance. We have effectively just had a massive Budget—bigger than many of the real Budgets through which I have sat over the past 25 years, all of which have been followed by five days' debate. Have you received any indication, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there is to be a change in House business to allow us to debate that Budget, or is democracy at an end in this place?

Angela Browning: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I can rule on the point of order, but bearing in mind that this is a time-limited debate, I am not sure that we would be well served by having an extensive series of points of order, which will only take out more of the time available to debate the important matter before the House.
	Let me say this, which should be helpful to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) and the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley): a point of order cannot be directed to the Minister. It can be directed only to the Chair, as I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman understands. He will know that the Chair cannot generally determine the House's business. Mr. Speaker will always carefully consider any requests for consideration of an urgent question or for an emergency debate. Those are the procedures that right hon. and hon. Members may follow to establish whether what they want the House to debate can be debated in the immediate future.

Angela Browning: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to you, but the point raised in the debate was about the 2.5 per cent. reduction in VAT. The point of having a full debate on the pre-Budget statement is that when the Chancellor mentioned the change, he admitted that he had opted for the 2.5 per cent. VAT measure in preference to a general tax reduction because it was a quicker way of getting it through this House. Under those circumstances and given the importance of that very statement, surely Mr. Speaker could assist my two right hon. Friends who have suggested holding a proper debate on the pre-Budget statement.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am not sure that I can say anything fresh to the hon. Lady on that. Indeed, Mr. Speaker would consider any requests for a debate according to the usual criteria, but we cannot allow the egg to be greater than the chicken in this particular instance in that we are debating what we are debating and we have to conduct that debate against whatever the background of other circumstances we know about. We can have a debate about the effects of what the Chancellor announced in strict relation to the matter before the House now, which is what we should be doing now, rather than raising points of order. I have dealt on the point of order with the question whether a general debate should be held and I have tried to suggest a way forward for hon. Members.

Andrew Tyrie: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I hope that the hon. Member is going to raise a fresh matter.

Andrew Tyrie: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I wish to add only that as far as I am aware—I would be grateful for your assistance—no statement of this magnitude has ever been made in the House without being followed by a full debate. The pre-Budget statement was without doubt the most important financial statement that I have ever heard since joining the House in 1997. I know of no autumn statement that has not been followed by a debate, so I would be grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on how we can gain an opportunity to—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is expressing a point of view, which he is entitled to express. However, that does not alter my ruling on the point of order. I have tried to be helpful to hon. Members about how to proceed on the issue. We must now return to the debate.

John Healey: I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I now return to back gardens.

David Drew: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and hope that we might gain some more time to debate planning. Does my right hon. Friend accept that the biggest problem is the unpredictability of decision making—by planning committees and inspectors at inquiries, for example? If he could issue guidance to ensure greater clarity of decision making, it could only help. The problem is that when a duff decision is made, precedent is everything; a whole series of other decisions are often taken subsequently that are grossly unfair to an area. I would be most grateful if my right hon. Friend looked further into that.

John Healey: The purpose of local planning frameworks is precisely to impart more certainty and predictability to the decisions that a planning authority must make. As for the concerns about development in back gardens, the evidence suggests that most authorities are still not taking advantage of the scope of the powers that they have under the guidance that we have already issued. However, I note what my hon. Friend has said, and if in the light of the review there is evidence to suggest that steps of that kind may be needed, we will certainly consider them.

Paul Truswell: Given the apparently huge disparity between the experiences of Members throughout the House in their constituencies, and given the overall statistics that my right hon. Friend has cited, will he publish the methodology and definitions that he will employ in his review? Before that, will he provide more detailed guidance on how local authorities can address issues of garden grabbing in the way that he has described? For reasons best known to themselves, many are not doing so at present.

John Healey: I urge my hon. Friend—as I have already urged Opposition Members—to encourage his local authority to pay much more attention to the scope that already exists in PPS3. In the new year we will make clear and public how the review is to be conducted, so that Members in all parts of the House have an opportunity to contribute evidence and experience from their constituencies and local authority areas. That will enable us to ascertain whether it is possible to secure a better evidence base on which to make policy judgments of this kind in the future.

Julia Goldsworthy: The debate about the focus of the review has centred largely on garden grabbing. Will the Minister reassure me that he will consider not just back garden development but development on green spaces as defined in the amendment, including
	"land laid out as a public garden"
	and
	"land used for the purposes of public recreation"?

John Healey: We have not yet made up our minds about the terms of the review, but I will take into account what the hon. Lady has said. A number of Members are clearly very interested in this issue, and if they wish to make their own contributions to the debate, I look forward to hearing them. Meanwhile, let me conclude my own opening remarks.
	Many Members who have spoken today have professed to believe in the proper power of elected local authorities. Imposing a blanket duty of this nature would take from elected local representatives the power to make proper, balanced judgments based on their knowledge of the overall needs of their areas. I believe that such decisions are best made by democratically elected councillors, working with local planners, who are much closer to the needs of local people and who will be better acquainted with the particular characteristics of any piece of land that may or may not be suitable for housing.
	It is not right to tie the hands of local councils and planning authorities. It is not currently necessary for councils to protect gardens, and such action would distort planning decisions and the scope for appeals. Above all, there is as yet no systematic evidence that there is a problem in need of this solution. However, we have not closed our minds to the concerns that have been expressed, and we are prepared to review the evidence in the new year. If there is a clear problem, we will act. In the meantime, I hope that the House will accept that ours is a reasonable response which constitutes a sensible next step, and that until the review has been completed it makes no sense to pre-empt its findings and jump to policy conclusions, let alone amendments to legislation. I therefore hope that the House will support me in rejecting Lords amendment No. 115.

Jacqui Lait: I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson). It is a pleasure to see the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy), but the hon. Gentleman is a stalwart of our proceedings on the Bill, and it would have been nice to see him here. Of course, he might have preferred to be present in a week or two, when the baby starts squalling!
	I am grateful to Earl Cathcart for tabling the amendment, which follows a long tradition. Both my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) tried desperately, through the medium of private Members' Bills, to persuade the Government to recognise that garden grabbing was an issue; and it is possible that I was the first person to raise the whole issue of overdevelopment, in a Westminster Hall debate. There is a long history of battling with the Government on this issue.

Lorely Burt: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Jacqui Lait: Briefly.

Lorely Burt: I fully acknowledge the hard work done by all Members, especially Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. I tabled a private Member's Bill in 2005, six weeks after my election. I do not know whether that gives me precedence, but it certainly demonstrates that Members in all part of the House are deeply concerned about the issue.

Jacqui Lait: The hon. Lady is right—and that concern is felt not just throughout the House, but throughout the country. The Minister mentioned a survey which, according to Earl Cathcart, refers to Bradford, Chelmsford and Tunbridge Wells. Those three towns, or cities, are very different, but they have similar problems. We in the outer-London boroughs have those problems too, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer).
	I am glad that the Government have promised us a review after all these years. I shall keep my remarks relatively brief, although there is much in regard to the Lords amendments that I want to put on record because the Bill is so undemocratic and badly thought through.
	There can be no substantive vote in Parliament for the national policy statements, which, in my view, means that they will go straight into the courts. That completely negates our basic reason for supporting them. The Infrastructure Planning Commission is equally undemocratic in removing Ministers' responsibility for making final decisions. The right to be heard in planning inquiries is still substantive, and the whole issue of the community infrastructure levy—with which I hope we will deal today—is unlikely to be considered in full.
	We want to discuss the subject of garden grabbing, even if we must do so relatively briefly. It is not just a case of the number of houses built on gardens, and it is not just a question of the number of planning applications for development in back gardens that succeed. According to the latest statistics, 21 per cent. of new dwellings in Bromley were built on former back gardens. The main point is that the nature of an area and a neighbourhood is changed by an increase in the density of housing. Areas are changed from—in my case—broad suburban streets with one house on a decent-sized garden to blocks of flats containing 48 people. That puts huge pressure on train services, health services, education services and roads, all because, sadly, the Planning Inspectorate has been bullied by the Government into making the decisions.

David Drew: I do not disagree with what the hon. Lady has said about the Planning Inspectorate, but does she accept that part of the unfairness of the system is the way in which it differentiates within areas? Changes may not be contemplated in one part of a district or borough, but in another part, once agreement has been reached the process of gradual degradation continues.

Jacqui Lait: The hon. Gentleman does not go far enough. I quite agree that as soon as a planning application is agreed in a street, there is a gradual change in that location, but there is nothing, even in conservation areas, to stop the Planning Inspectorate granting planning permission on appeal. That has happened on a very nice street in my constituency, where there has been appeal after appeal after appeal, and eventually the Planning Inspectorate gave permission. As a result, like a series of collapsing dominoes, the nature of that street will change. That is what everybody finds so objectionable.
	The Government try hard to play the innocent in all this by saying that PPS3 is no different from what went before, but it is very different. As Baroness Andrews identified in the other place, this started in 1985 when there was a need to categorise land use. That was when the category "residential R" was used to include
	"houses, flats and adjoining garages, gardens, estate roads and pathways. Sheltered accommodation where residences have separate front entrances."
	This was a convenient way of grouping statistical information, and nothing more than that.
	Then, in 1992? Chris Patten issued a new version of planning policy guidance note 3, which did not include any such definition of gardens as brownfield, nor did it contain density targets. Indeed, the guidance discouraged residential infill where inappropriate and gave a broad discretion to councils to protect the character of their locality.
	In 2000, there was a revised PPG3, and in 2006, the then Minister for Housing, the right hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), stated in a written answer that the PPG3 of 2000
	"set out the definition of previously-developed land for the purposes for planning for housing, derived from urban land uses based on the Land Use Change Statistics classification introduced in 1985 but not previously articulated in planning guidance."—[ Official Report, 21 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 296W.]
	That is the difference—the Government introduced the change in the PPG3 of 2000. Although I welcome the Minister's announcement today of a review, it would be helpful if he examined the history, recognised what happened in 2000 and accepted that it is the Government's fault that we are where we are.
	The excuses have changed as this debate has gone on, and the next excuse, which is relatively new and has been expressed today, relates to the local development frameworks. Those of us who have been watching the progress of LDFs have been astounded by how slowly they have come through, how often they have been sent back for revision and change, and how few have gained permission and agreement. It is, to say the least, disingenuous for the Government to claim that, under the LDF, councils have the right to set out their views on garden grabbing. Theoretically, the Planning Inspectorate has the final say on LDFs, of course, but if there is an instruction under the PPG3 of 2000 to include gardens, councils have very little chance of getting things through. Additionally, just recently we all thought the LDFs represented a binding decision in relation to the Planning Inspectorate, but they were recently challenged—in the High Court, I believe, in the case of the Crawley LDF—and the judge found against the inspectorate. So, the LDF is no longer binding, which decisively shoots any protection offered out of the water.
	Much of what we are talking about—such as the difficulties involved in a local authority retaining control over the identity of its own area—has been challenged and changed by this Government. I suppose it is some comfort that, from a very quick reading, the Killian Pretty review seems to be suggesting that most of what the Government have introduced should be altered so that local authorities regain their ability to be much more in control of their own planning. We hope that the Government accept the review findings, and we will be looking out for what happens to that review. However, in order to ensure that as much pressure as possible remains on the Government to amend the Bill so we have an end to garden grabbing, I shall advise my hon. Friends to vote with the Lords and against the Government motion to disagree.

Julia Goldsworthy: I will be sure to pass on the many congratulations from all parts of the House on the arrival of Elowen Ruby Rose Rogerson, and I can safely say that, although my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) has committed a huge amount of time to this Bill, he would prefer to be with his family and their new arrival at this very special time.
	A series of important issues arise in connection with the groups of amendments that we are discussing, so I shall speak only briefly. The Liberal Democrats support Lords amendment No. 115, which is the culmination of concern from Members in all parts of the House. As the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) said, the hon. Members for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) and for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) introduced private Members' Bills to protect back gardens and public open spaces, particularly in suburban areas, where there seems to be a greater problem than in other areas.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) first raised this issue just six weeks after being elected to Parliament, and the proposal in her excellent Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill would have gone further than this amendment, by allowing for local referendums to decide when public open spaces can and cannot be sold off. That was an interesting and innovative proposal which would have handed real power back to communities, who are rightly concerned that the character of their areas is being adversely and irreparably affected by developments in gardens and open spaces.
	It is a travesty that much-needed green space in urban areas is lumped into the category of brownfield land, and that the Government are insisting that there is not a problem when eminently developable, genuinely brownfield public sector land lies largely unused. Earlier this year, my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) received a ministerial response stating that 70 per cent. of the land owned by the Department of Health is not being used. Ministers cannot insist that communities accept unquestioningly new development on their public open spaces without at least putting their own houses, and the land on which houses could be built, in order. There is a large amount of brownfield land in my constituency, but it is highly contaminated by heavy metals from mining. Even in such areas, there is a hierarchy of brownfield sites, and often back gardens are the most attractive and most affordable to develop.
	I hope that the review will look into such concerns and that it will be forward-looking in scope as well as backward-looking. There are great concerns in my constituency that the housing targets set by the regional spatial strategy can be fulfilled only by developing every available space in the entire constituency.

Susan Kramer: Is my hon. Friend aware that one of the attractions of garden grabbing is that developers are usually in a position to build a small development? They always build nine units in my constituency, because at 10 they would have to provide one social housing unit. If they take on much larger plots of brownfield land, they have to put in significant amounts of social housing. I have two local authorities that are desperately trying to increase social housing in our area, but they are finding that the whole interest of the development community is in using gardens for luxury housing.

Julia Goldsworthy: My hon. Friend makes a good point about how the incentives are skewed towards development on gardens in too many cases.
	In announcing his review today, the Minister is being very helpful. The Minister in the other place, whom my colleagues there have said was helpful and courteous throughout, has used the excuse that there has not been time to consult on the implications of this amendment. The review is very welcome, but I am not clear why there has been no opportunity to initiate such a review before today, given that the Bill has been going through the House for 11 months and the issue has been raised on numerous occasions by Back Benchers. I would appreciate some comment from the Minister on why a decision has now been taken to carry out that review, given that it would perhaps have been more timely to have made such a decision earlier. It is a little frustrating, because Ministers in another place have been constructive on a number of other issues, so it would perhaps have been more sensible for the Government to have tabled their own amendment to reflect the concerns that residents all over Britain have about this issue. Such a provision could have been inserted in the Bill and perhaps made subject to regulation. That would have given a lot of people more confidence that this issue was being directly addressed.

Caroline Spelman: To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), should not the review closely examine whether the Government's failure to define gardens correctly as gardens, rather than as brownfield land, has thwarted their endeavour to ensure that a significant percentage of the new homes that are being built are affordable? As she has pointed out, the failure to define gardens correctly has thwarted the Government in their own objective, and that should form part of the review.

Julia Goldsworthy: The impact of the lack of classification should be considered in that review. In a way, the amendment would make it easier for the Department to conduct such a review, because a clear classification of green space and brownfield land would make it much easier to separate the differential impact of development in these different areas. The lack of such differentiation at present makes the review's job more difficult.
	The amendment involves a second principle that should be raised, and it places clear blue water between ourselves and the Government. The amendment says that guidance issued by the Secretary of State or the regional planning authorities cannot simply override local priorities, and we share that approach. The local authority and local views should take priority and precedence, yet this Government seem determined to subject communities to a litany of regional and national policies and targets that will necessarily trump local priorities in the pecking order and that, in many cases, will take a bulldozer not only to valued green spaces, but to local democracy. This is one example where the Government take that approach, but there are many others in the Bill. One need only look at the approach on national policy statements and on the Infrastructure Planning Commission to see that.

Lorely Burt: May I offer my hon. Friend another example? In Solihull, the Government have ignored our regional development plan and have commissioned another independent consultancy, Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners, which has come up with recommendations that treble the already agreed allocation of new housing for the borough of Solihull. Perhaps she might like to ask the Minister how that can be, and how it sits with the comments that he is making about putting decision making in the hands of the people who are elected in their local areas.

Julia Goldsworthy: In too many cases, it seems that the wishes of the local community are being undermined by the Bill, yet it is an opportunity to promote them. The Minister is in denial about the scale of the assault on back gardens and on small, but often highly valued, open spaces in urban areas. I welcome the door opening a crack, through the chance to examine this issue in the review, but before we are fully reassured we will need to hear much more detail on its terms and implications.
	All too often, particularly in the Department for Communities and Local Government, excellent reports are commissioned but then, unfortunately, gather dust on top shelves once they have been completed. Members across the House are acutely aware of the need to build more housing, particularly social housing and affordable housing. We have suggested innovative ways to increase our social housing stock after a decade of failure in that area. As ever, the aim surely must be not only to build houses but to foster and maintain living, vibrant communities. It is not just about plonking people in rows of boxes; we must create places in which people want to live, work and grow up. We need places that are not just environmentally friendly but a friendly environment in which to live. Back gardens and open spaces in which to meet and play are essential to achieving that aim, so for those reasons, my hon. Friends and I will support the amendment.

Caroline Spelman: I welcome the opportunity to speak, given my long-standing interest in back garden development, and I wish to pay tribute to the work of many hon. Members present who have taken up this cause. An interesting feature of the debate on the definition of gardens and how best to protect them is that it has elicited so much interest from Members from all parts of this House, as well in another place. That has come in the guise of an early-day motion signed by 179 Members representing all partiesnot those whom one might call the usual suspects, but Members whose constituencies have been badly afflicted by this problem of back garden developmentand in the guise of ten-minute Bills and private Members' Bills tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) and me. Those things, in themselves, indicate how seriously Members in the House of Commons take this issue.
	I dispute the Minister's view that the most recent changes to planning guidance provide adequate protection for gardens. Patently, they do not. I detect a degree of complacency in the attitude of a Government who are prepared to wait even until next year for a review to take place. Plenty of evidence is available to show that the existing guidance simply does not work. That is because of a deadly combination when these cases go to appeal: the definition of brownfield land extending to gardens, housing targets, and density targets. The combination of those three things takes precedence in the hierarchy of decision making when the planning inspector reviews a case where planning consent has been refused. There is plenty of evidence to show that since the introduction of that change to planning guidance in 2006, the defence that the Minister cites is simply not working. Local planning authorities know that, developers know that and communities know thatto their cost.
	The fact that the change to planning guidance has now been in force for more than 18 months flies in the face of people's experience. As recently as last week, I was contacted by a local action group called the Friends of Middleton Conservation Area. Its local council, Darlington borough council, had refused a controversial application for garden development, not least because the application related to a conservation area. The application went to appeal, and despite strong representations from the council, the decision was overturned.
	I raise that examplethere are many more such examplesnot only because it crossed my desk last week, 18 months after the introduction of the change in guidance to which the Minister referred, but because the application was for development in a conservation area. If a local council is overruled when trying to prevent inappropriate development in a conservation area, surely something is drastically wrong with the planning system.
	I urge hon. Members to think long and hard about the legacy of the prioritisation of brownfield land, including gardens. The legacy is significant in terms of the environment and infrastructure. I have seen at first hand the environmental legacy in areas where inappropriate garden development has been permitted. Neighbourhoods that were once a finely balanced mix of green spaces and homes have been changed beyond recognition. Family homes have been demolished, trees have been felled and hedges have been uprooted. Gardens that were a rich source of urban biodiversity have been stripped back and buried under concrete, with all the environmental implications that follow.
	Not only is the natural environment under assault, but the architectural environment is too. In some cases, old family houses have been bulldozed to make way for high-density, multi-storey apartment blocks. Likewise, bungalows are in developers' sights in a rush to create high-density housing.

Susan Kramer: Does the hon. Lady know that in one development on a suburban street in south-west London the developers have proposedbecause there is no street parkinga subterranean garage with a hydraulic lift to take the cars down, as if it were in the middle of Manhattan?

Caroline Spelman: I thank the hon. Lady for that example, and I am happy to trade another horrifying example from this past yeara year after the changes in planning guidance were made that were supposed to be the salvation of back gardens. Two bungalows in Marston Green in my constituency were proposed for demolition to make way for 71 apartments. And that was on a narrow, tree-lined lane with difficult access.
	As politicians, we have to ask ourselves where we are going with this. We know that there is a shortage of family-sized homes, especially with gardens. That was acknowledged by the Chief Secretary, when she was Housing Minister. We know that our country has an ageing population. People are living longer and the evidence is that they will want to live longer in their own homes, which makes the rush to demolish bungalowsthe very type of home that will be vital to many older people's ability to sustain themselves at home for longersuch nonsense. We know that there is a chronic shortage of affordable homes, so it is perverse that developers are almost directed to build high-density housing on areas with a high land value, with the consequences that we have all seen: large numbers of luxury apartments while housing lists grow in our constituencies, and those who desperately need housing not able to attain the affordable housing that the Government set out to achieve.
	We also know that flood risk will dominate over the coming years, so why on earth are we relying on a planning system that says it is a good idea to concrete over urban green spaces, thereby reducing the drainage capacity? I have seen a particularly bad case of that in Cheltenham, which is prone to flooding and severely affected by the phenomenon of garden grabbing. Sir Michael Pitt, who led the Government's review of last summer's floods, told the BBC that garden grabbing had increased the risk of further flooding. He said:
	If it was just one house and one garden, this would not be an issue. It's the cumulative effect over time of many, many properties.
	It would be a mistake for the Government to ignore that advice.
	If the Minister requires evidence of whether his planning guidance is working, he need look no further than GardenOrganic, a website set up by people who want to protect gardens. Every week, examples of garden grabbing are cited on that website, from Ballyrobert in Northern Ireland, from Cardiff in Waleswhere it is proposed to develop a reservoir site for housingand from Forest Hill in London. It is happening all over the country, which is why it excites the interest of so many Members, here and in the other place.
	It was Members in the other place who voted in favour of this amendment. Clearly, they saw that the law is not strong enough to provide the necessary protection for gardens. It boils down to the fundamental question of whether Ministers in Whitehall know better about local planning applications than the communities that will be affected and the people whom those communities elect to represent them. Members of Parliament can argue about the rights and wrongs of various planning applications, but the basic question must surely be who is best placed to make the decisionstown hall or Whitehall? If we have really reached the stage where the Government do not even trust councils to determine which residential gardens are suitable for development and which are not, the lip service that the Government pay to decentralisation is risible.
	I shall now turn my attention to the way in which the Government have changed their response to the issue of garden grabbing, which may help to explain why they object to the amendment. I cannot help but notice, because I have been campaigning on this issue for so long, that the Government's various attempts to stonewall have been built on shifting sands. When garden grabbing was debated first, it came under the remit of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minster, and the objection from the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) was that the need for house building was such that gardens were a legitimate source of development. When the baton was passed to the right hon. Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly), she moved the Government's position and instead maintained that councils already had powers at their disposal to prevent garden grabbing. Now the issue rests with the current Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and I note that there has been another change of tack.
	When this amendment was debated in the other place, the Government insisted that they could not support it because they needed to consult local government first. Far be it from me, or any other hon. Member, to second-guess the view of local government, but I think that it is safe to say that giving local councils more power over local planning decisions could only be welcomed by local government. Are Ministers honestly trying to tell us that giving councils the power to protect gardens where they think that appropriate will be controversial, and that for that reason we should oppose this amendment? If that is their last line of defence, the argument has certainly been won, even if the vote is not.
	Sadly, the fact that we are debating an amendment to remove a clause to give councils the power to protect gardens shows how hostile to local communities this Government have now become. There is a stark contrast in how this issue has been approached. The Government have been inconsistent in their reasons for seeking to prevent gardens from having greater protection in planning law. They have gone from defending garden development to blaming local councils for not using what powers they do have. When it came to my own private Member's Bill, Labour Members talked it out rather than pressing it to a Division, but hon. Members from both sides of the House who have campaigned for more protection for gardens have put forward a reasoned, consistent and common-sense case for tightening the loophole. Hon. Members who signed the early-day motion on the issue might wish to think long and hard about the consistency of that signature with how they vote on the issue tonight.
	Clause 194 offers an historic opportunity for us to change planning law in a way that will strengthen local communities, and safeguard the environment and infrastructure that underpin where people live. Members in the other place have shown that they are willing to speak up for the growing body of people who want to see their neighbourhoods and communities protected. If at the end of today's debate this clause is removed, the public will judge this Government very harshly.

John Healey: I recognise and respect what the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) called the long track record of several hon. Members, on both sides of the Housenot least the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman)in raising concerns about garden grabbing, or development in back gardens. However, it is curious, given that long track record of campaigning, that the evidence is so thin and anecdotal [ Interruption. ] Well, the hon. Member for Beckenham protests from a sedentary position, but the six towns study does not count. She cited some figures from her local authority area, but she did not cite any wider study, rigorous evidence or independent research that would provide good grounds for the Government to adjust their policy now or amend the legislation.

Jacqui Lait: The Minister has agreed that Members have a long track record in raising these issues. Most of us do not raise such issues for trivial reasons. There is therefore a clear indication that there is great concern about this issue. Some 21 per cent. of all new houses built in Bromley are on back gardens, and that is one fifth of all planning applications. I cannot believe that the Minister thinks that one fifth of all planning applications are not important.

John Healey: I heard what the hon. Lady said earlier, and I have just referred to what she said about Bromley. In a way, the point partly applies to the remarks of the hon. Member for Meriden, who seemed to be arguing that we should move away from not only the question of development in gardens but the priority of brownfield sites per se.
	Let me pick up on the point about blanket directions at a national level. They are simply unlikely to suit all circumstances. The hon. Member for Beckenham cites figures that are apparently from Bromley. In 2005, for instance, Basildon council informed us that not 20-odd per cent.as was the case in Bromleybut 72 per cent. of such developments were on previously developed or residential land. The reason for that was that during that period in Basildon there was, quite rightly, a large programme of demolitions, as the town had a lot of pressure on it for housing and a lot of previously developed land. There was a large programme of demolitions, in particular the demolition of the old Five Links estate, and of replacing the demolished areas with new housing and new estates with private gardens. In short, it involved the redevelopment of land that had previously been residentialthe sort of areas that, in blanket terms, hon. Members are concerned about. It resulted in more houses with gardens for more families. That is exactly the sort of development the hon. Member for Meriden wants to see and that hon. Members are keen to encourage.
	The hon. Member for Beckenham, as well as one or two other hon. Members in their many interventions, tried to argue that the Planning Inspectorate'sPINS'sdecisions are one of the sources of the problems and the reasons for the increase in garden development. There is no serious evidence of PINS's overturning local authority decisions on brownfield development just because the developments are on garden land. Figures that have been provided to us by the PINS service show that, in the couple of years up to the early autumn of 2007, 28.5 per cent. of appeals were granted on minor dwellingson fewer than 10 dwellings. In other words, in more than 70 per cent. of the cases, PINS supported the local authority decision. I therefore think that it is an inconclusive argument, at best, to say that the problems are somehow created by the Planning Inspectorate and its series of decisions.
	The sort of approach that we are confronted with, as a House, is not merely about pre-empting the sort of proper evidence base needed to make such decisions. It is worth stressing now a point that I touched on earlier but did not develop. Such an approach would prevent the Secretary of State from setting aside decisions made in accordance with the adopted local policies of a planning authority for the protection of gardens or green space, effectively removing the discretion to take account of other considerations, such as the design or suitability of transport links, in determining appeals.
	If the Lords amendment is not rejected, and we do not have the opportunity to assemble the evidence, debate the policy options that might be appropriate or consult on any potential legal changesas the Conservative-led Local Government Association made clear in a briefing on the Bill this afternoon that it would rightly wish to happenwe risk distorting the planning process and also the scope for appeals. Such a provision would place restrictions on the right of appeal of ordinary home and garden owners against the decision of a planning authority and could also touch on human rights issues.
	I have confirmed that, in the new year, we will undertake a review of the evidence. The debate, I have to say, has not added to the evidence base. It has added to the list of individual examples and anecdotes and has reinforced the understandable sense of concern that hon. Members say that they have about what goes on in their area. I tell those Members who are concerned that one useful step that they might consider is that of asking their local authority what use it makes of the scope available under PPS3. Furthermore, although in general I am not one to promote the views of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), they might want to consult him on the approach that his local authority has taken. In our experience, it is one of the few local authorities to have in place the sort of planning policies that make distinctions that are locally justified, locally rooted and locally determined within the category of brownfield land for priority development.
	I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) said that she regards the confirmation of a review that I announced today as helpful. I welcome the welcome that the hon. Member for Beckenham gave to that review. I hope that she considers it as a new step, which is sensible and reasonable in the circumstances. I hope that she and other hon. Members will reflect on the fact that jumping beyond that approach to a conclusion that the policy and the legislation require change is not sensible or reasonable. There is a proper order for such things. We intend to undertake that review and will then establish whether there is systematic evidence that would warrant the changes for which some have argued this afternoon.
	I hope that the hon. Member for Beckenham will not press the amendment to a Division. If she does, I shall have to ask my hon. Friends to stick with the view that the House should disagree with the Lords on amendment No. 115.

Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment:
	 The House divided: Ayes 278, Noes 217.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment disagreed to.

Clause 207
	  
	CIL regulations: general

Lords amendment: No. 160.

John Healey: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
	The amendment would provide for a 60-day period during which either House may debate or pass a resolution on the draft community infrastructure levy regulations or refer the draft regulations to any Committee for a report. The Secretary of State must then respond to any debate, resolution or report, including by the other place, before this House may give approval to the regulations. The amendment followed an earlier Opposition Back-Bench amendment tabled in the other place that proposed that all CIL regulations should be subject to affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament. That amendment was rightly defeated and fell.
	The House will be aware that clause 207(2) provides that CIL regulations are made subject to the affirmative resolution of this House only. It is the Government's view that that is appropriate since CIL is a financial matter. The House might like to note that the Bill has been in this form since it was published. It is also worth noting that this House did not at any stage seek to change that to give the other place a role. Not a single amendment was tabled in Committee in this House on this issue.
	This is a financial matter. It is a matter for this elected House of Commons. For those reasons, I ask it to reject the amendment.

Jacqui Lait: I acknowledge that we did not discuss this issue in Committee. However, the amendment goes to the heart of our disagreement with the Government on the community infrastructure levy. The Minister will remember that we tabled many amendments in Committee. In fact, we objected to this aspect of the Bill from Second Reading onwards. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles)he was delighted to receive the Minister's praise about his local development framework, although he says that it is not working in the way set outand I made the accusation that CIL was akin to ship money, because it was taxation without parliamentary approval.
	We have been suspicious all along about CIL because of the original references within the Bill to land values, and we will be able to thank the Government for accepting our recommendations and removing all references to land values should we reach that stage. However, the initial references to land value essentially meant that there was a taxation element to the community infrastructure levy. There was also a reluctance, to put it politely, on the part of the Government to repeal the Planning-gain Supplement (Preparations) Act 2007, which if it remains on the statute book will allow CIL to be set up to fail, which was always at the back of my mind with this policy. The Government have sort of conceded on that, and there is an agreement in one of the amendments that the Treasury may repeal the 2007 Act. The House might like to note that I have tabled an amendment that it must repeal it. Until the references to CIL as a tax are out of the Bill, no one will believe that it is anything other than another form of taxation.
	Our problem with the Government's disagreement with the Lords on Lord Jenkin's amendment is that it reinstates the argument that CIL is a tax. One of the difficulties that we have had throughout our discussions on CIL is the sheer lack of information about what it would be, how it would constituted, what form it would take, and who would be the charging authoritythe Secretary of State or someone else. Again, just in case we do not get to that bit, I acknowledge that the Government have removed references to the Secretary of State as the charging authority. The wording now relates only to local authorities, which is what we argued for all along.
	The Government are denying the House of Lords the ability to consider and, if it wishes, to vote on the regulations on CIL. Although the House of Lords graphically said that CIL had moved from skeletal in its detail to anorexic, we still know little about it and it is not clear whether it is a tax or a levy collected by a local authority. We disagree with the Government because we wish to make it as clear as possible that CIL is a levy. It is not, and should not be, a tax.
	Part of the debate in the Lords was about the fact that there is no clear precedent on what financial matters can and cannot be discussed thereother than, of course, the well-known exception of the Budget. Lord Jenkin cited the fact that both Houses have discussed national insurance, council tax, business rates, the business improvement district levy, the climate change levy, and other charges. One or two of those are collected centrally. The community infrastructure levy is allegedly not going to be collected centrally; it is going to be collected by local authorities. The crucial difference is that the money raised from the levy is not going into the Consolidated Fund. Therefore, it is not taxation; it is a levy agreed between a developer and a local authority. It is appropriate that the Lords, who aredare I admit it?much more expert than we are in many areas, should consider the regulations.
	CIL is still not clear; there is much work still to be done between the Government, industry and the professions involved in development. It is crucial that the regulations be examined in great detail when they come before the Houses of Parliament. It is absolutely correct that the House of Lords should be invitedindeed, should expectto scrutinise the regulations, which will benefit from its scrutiny. If the Government are not prepared to concede that their lordships have a real role in ensuring that CIL is as workable as possible, I will have to return to my original suspicionthat the Government regard CIL as another form of taxation, that the planning gain supplement has not gone away, that what the Government have said so far is merely warm words, and that the development industry is facing another tax in these difficult times when they are not able to do much, if anything, in the way of development.
	If and when better times return, the industry will face another tax, and the implication of another tax is that it will take even longer to build the houses and development needed to get this country going, so that it can meet the challenges of the 21st century in very different circumstances. I therefore support the Lords in their amendment, and will be voting against the Government.

Julia Goldsworthy: We Liberal Democrats welcome Lords amendment No. 160, which improves the Bill by seeking to reassert the role of the other place. It is a matter of great regret that the Government are attempting to freeze the second Chamber out of considering important regulations. The Minister argued that we are talking about a matter of financial privilege for this House. That sets a dangerous precedent for other regulations, and is not consistent with the consideration that the Lords give to other issues, such as council tax and business rates, which are both collected locally, and the business improvement district levy. Why should the CIL regulations be any different from regulations on those issues?
	The Government have rightly removed the Secretary of State from the list of CIL charging authorities, so it is clear that we are talking about a matter for local determination, and not national taxation. The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee accurately reported that the receipts from CIL are not to be paid into the Consolidated Fund, but will be spent by the receiving body. Crucially, it also reported that key clauses that the legislation will leave to regulations are not obviously financial. The regulations relate to liability for the charge, charity law, rights of appeal and compensation, all of which are issues of legislative principle, not financial privilege.
	Baroness Hamwee, my colleague in another place, argued that the provisions are so ill thought out that clause 207 should be excised altogether and brought back in another Bill, when Ministers know what they want to do. Instead, the Government have tried to put the charge on the legislative express train, whose final stop will be a 90-minute debate in a tiny Committee of this House.
	Unfortunately, this is not the first assault on the role of the other place; Ministers have had a go at doing the same thing before, with proposals to thwart the role of the House of Lords in deciding on secondary legislation. The Joint Committee on Conventions looked into the issues in detail in 2006, and comprehensively rejected the case for impeding the ability of peers to say no to regulations on occasion. Indeed, it found, quite specifically:
	There are situations in which it is consistent both with the Lords' role in Parliament as a revising chamber, and with Parliament's role in relation to delegated legislation, for the Lords to threaten to defeat an SI. For example...when the parent Act was a 'skeleton Bill', and the provisions of the SI are of the sort more normally found in primary legislation.
	Part 11 of the Bill is so skeletal as to be positively emaciated. That is why we tabled amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 160to restore the basic right of a second Chamber in a bicameral Parliament to reject, in the last resort, a legislative proposal of which it does not approve. Ministers sometimes seem to forget that statutory instruments are legislation and should be treated as such. It is only right to treat them in that way, in terms of process, because we get better regulations as a result. The amendment is a welcome step forward.

Clive Betts: Given that we are talking about matters that are not subject to the Parliament Act, is the hon. Lady saying she believes that the other place should have a right to veto legislation passed by this House?

Julia Goldsworthy: No, not a veto. I just think it is appropriate that the treatment of regulations made under the Bill should be consistent with the treatment of other regulations. The House of Lords has a right to consider issues such as council tax, business improvement districts and the levies that I mentioned, but are not given financial privilege; I see no reason why the regulations that we are discussing should not be viewed in those terms.
	Almost all the substantial improvements made to the Bill are the result of pressure in the other place. It seems inappropriate to exclude the Lords from the process of putting flesh on the bones of this legislation. Peers have succeeded in getting some detail in the Bill, which is an improvement on what we had in this place. The process has proved that they are well placed to make rational, reasonable improvements as a result of genuinely cross-party consensus. On climate change, commons and open spaces, national policy statements, cross-examination during planning hearings, and people's right to avoid nuisance, the House of Lords has made a real difference to the Bill. It is better for their work on it, and the Minister should recognise that by withdrawing his opposition to a sensible amendment. He should allow another place to do its work, as we do ours. Those of us who believe in a bicameral Parliament should support the amendment.

John Healey: Lords amendment No. 160 was introduced on Third Reading in another place. It would put in place a new procedure for the Lords' role in secondary legislation. As such, it would create a precedent in the constitutional relations between this House and the other place. It is not appropriate to make such changes and precedents, which could affect other forms of secondary legislation, at the tail end of a Planning Bill.
	I return to the principal point: the provision is on a financial issue that should rightly be a matter for this elected House of Commons. Since the Bill's publication, the provision has been that there would be an affirmative procedure for the CIL regulations. That provision was not subject to any proposed amendment in any of its stages in this House. It is not appropriate to make the change now, and therefore if Opposition Members press Lords amendment No. 160 to a Division, I encourage my hon. Friends to reject it.

Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment:
	 The House divided: Ayes 275, Noes 204.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment disagreed to.

Clause 5
	  
	National policy statements

Lords amendment: No. 1.

John Healey: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 7, Lords amendment No. 8 and amendment (a) thereto, Lords amendments Nos. 9 to 64, Lords amendment No. 65 and amendments (a) to (c) thereto, Lords amendments Nos. 66 to 100, 164 to 170, 173 to 182, 184, 185, 187, 189, 191 to 212 and 214 to 217.

John Healey: This large group of amendments relates to parts 1 to 8 and part 12, which are concerned with the creation of a new single consent regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects. At each stage of the Bill in both Houses, that issue has been subject to detailed parliamentary debate and scrutiny. However, even in the months since we first published the Bill, we have seen economic circumstances change dramatically. We have seen the effect of instability in the world energy markets, and it has never been so evident. That has concentrated minds still further on our national need for new investment in energy generation, and in particular on our need to replace one third of our electricity generation within the next 20 years or so.
	In the nine months since we first debated the Bill, the world has become even more conscious of the threat of climate change. We have now pledged to move towards a carbon reduction of not 60 per cent. but 80 per cent. in this country by 2050. Doing that will require a tenfold increase in renewable generation over the next 12 years. Finally, the issues of pressure and competitiveness in the world economy, and competition for much needed investment in this country, are now even clearer.
	Let us take, for example, Shell Haven port. That new development represents a 1.5 billion investment and will create in Britain the largest new logistics centre in Europe. The promoters estimate that it will generate 12,000 jobs, raise skills and bring huge regeneration benefits to the Thames Gateway. It will also reduce by 40 million km a year the distance travelled by heavy goods vehicles on UK roads. The UK needs such investment, but we must also create the right sort of environment for it, including a better planning system. That means implementing the reforms set out in the Bill.
	There have been excellent debates throughout the Commons stagesnot least in Committeeon the role of the infrastructure planning commission, its powers and accountability, the role of the national policy statements in providing a clear policy framework for IPC decisions, the type and size of projects that should be captured in the new regime and the accessibility of the new regime to the public. Those debates continued in the other place and the Bill has been much strengthened by amendments, many of them set out in this group.
	Many of the amendments to these parts of the Bill are minor and technical. I shall concentrate on the most important amendments, which significantly strengthen the Bill.

Joan Walley: Will my right hon. Friend put on the record the concerns that have been raised about clause 157? I speak as an honorary vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Will he confirm that he will consult that body, and that what is being proposed will not undermine the whole issue in respect of statutory nuisance and the preventive measures that can be taken?

John Healey: My hon. Friend has a long-standing interest in these questions and good working links with environmental health officers. I think that I can give her those reassurances, although she would probably find it more useful if I set them out in detail, to respond to her concern in the light of amendments that have been made. I undertake to do so.
	I turn to the most significant issues, particularly in respect of the strengthening of the Bill in the other place. I shall start with parliamentary scrutiny. Through parliamentary scrutiny and especially through national policy statements, Ministers will continue to take the big decisions. Those will be visible and at the front of the process rather than at the back end, as is the case under the current system. Once the national policy statement is in place, it will set the principal framework for any IPC decisions on particular applications.
	If the national policy statements are to function effectively, they must be authoritative and strong. That is why we are committed to ensuring that they are thoroughly tested through public consultation and through a new system of parliamentary scrutiny that we have developed in discussion with the Chairs of the relevant Select Committees. Lords amendment No. 7 will strengthen the role of the other place in the scrutiny of national policy statements. The amendment extends the requirement that the Secretary of State is required to lay before Parliament a statement setting out her response to a Committee of this House or of either House.
	I turn now to climate change, a subject of strong debate throughout this House's scrutiny of the Bill. A number of my hon. Friends have strongly championed a strengthening of the provisionsnot least my hon. Friends the Members for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who are the principal advocates of an amendment to Lords amendment No. 8. If I explain to my hon. Friends how we have strengthened the Bill through amendments in the Lords, perhaps that will give the proper context and explain some of the problems that I envisage with their amendment (a).
	Lords amendment No. 8 looks to alter the current duty in relation to sustainable development which requires the Secretary of State to draw up or review national policy statements with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development. Let me explain what is meant by that. The concept of sustainable development sits at the heart of planning. It catches the range of our economic, social and environment objectives and ensures that we focus on developing our country in a way that is sustainable in the long term and protects the needs of future generations as well as the current one.
	Achieving such sustainable development will require Ministers to address climate change. We must also address issues such as landscape, biodiversity and natural resources and integrate them in a sensible and balanced way that allows at the same time consideration of certain social and economic concerns. In that way, the policy will bring those elements together. We have debated the concept of sustainable development a number of times during the passage of the Bill and we believe that it should be the guiding principle for Ministers as they prepare the national policy statements. That is why clause 10 attaches such importance to it.
	We recognise, however, that as we have debated the various stages of the Bill, Members of this House and the other place have expressed a strong desire to put something more explicit in the Bill to reflect the importance of climate change. That argument has been strongly led by my hon. Friends the Members for Pudsey and for Stroud, as well as by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping), who is not in his place at the moment. We therefore made amendments to the Bill in the other place. However, we have been conscious of the need not to unbalance the principle of sustainable development by elevating the consideration of climate change and design to such a degree that other considerations would be relatively marginalisedsuch as jobs and investment, health, a just society and other environmental factors such as the protection of biodiversity or the natural environment.
	The formulation that we have set out in Lords amendment No. 8 requires the Secretary of State to have regard in particular to the desirability of adapting to and mitigating climate change. Making it a statutory requirement to have regard to something that is desirable is a recognised concept in planning, and it is an approach that has been the subject of several cases. It clarifiesI hope that this will give my hon. Friends some reassurancethe fact that requiring decision makers to have particular regard to the desirability of an objective works as a way of putting something first and foremost in the decision maker's mind, while not preventing them from considering other important matters. Where a desirable objective is met by a particular proposal, that must be a major point in its favour, but it does not necessarily rule out having regard to other factors.
	We now have in the Bill a clear three-stage process. First, Ministers must, as part of drawing up the national policy statements with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development, have particular regard to the desirability of mitigating and adapting to climate change. That is a strengthening of the Bill since this House last debated it. Secondly, Ministers will thoroughly assess what the impact of the policy is on carbon emissions and other factors affecting climate change and, where necessary, adjust the policy in light of this. Thirdly, Ministers must report on what they have done and why, in the context of wider climate change policy, including the Climate Change Bill.
	My concerns about my hon. Friends' proposition are twofold. First, particularly as we strengthen the Bill in the ways that I have described, their amendment could in practice elevate climate change and design considerations over all other considerations of sustainable development, and in doing so might pre-empt a decision about what in any particular case amounts to sustainable development. Secondly, the introduction of the phrase due regard to the need to raises a problem, because it is untested and it is not exactly clear what it means or what effect it would have in practice. That differs from the approach that we have taken in Lords amendment No. 8.
	Let me turn to the issue of design. In the other place, there was a strong mood and move towards making amendments to ensure that the new regime gave sufficient weight to the need for infrastructure to be well designed. Lords amendment No. 1 therefore requires that every national policy statement will set out criteria for design that must be taken into account in the development to which the policy statement relates. That means that in every national policy statement Ministers should set out clear expectations that infrastructure projects would be well designed and provide a framework against which proposals could be assessed.
	The third area of major concern, as at each stage of the Bill's passage, was the reviewing of national policy statements. Lords amendment No. 3 provides clear criteria to determine when a national policy statement should be reviewed, requiring that the Secretary of State must consider whether there has been a significant change in any circumstances on which the policy is based since the last time it was reviewed. The Secretary of State must also consider whether the circumstances were already anticipated in the previous review and whether, if the change had been anticipated, any of the policy in the statement would be materially different. Lords amendments Nos. 3, 4, 9,10 and 11 provide that when the Secretary of State wishes to conduct a review of a national policy statement it could be a complete or a partial review. They add a measure of flexibility so that where appropriate the Secretary of State will need only to consider whether circumstances have changed significantly in respect of the part that is to be reviewed rather than for the policy statement as a whole.
	Let me turn to statements of policy that pre-date the commencement of these provisions. This aspect is of particular concern to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). Lords amendments Nos. 12, 15, 16 and 17 amend clause 12 to provide that where the Secretary of State wishes to use existing statements of policy or work that was done for the purposes of existing statements of policy, the standards of the Bill will still apply.

John McDonnell: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

John Healey: I was taking a deep breath to get on to developing that point, but by all means I give way to my hon. Friend.

John McDonnell: I apologise for the fact that in four minutes' time I am meant to be chairing a committee, so I will have to leave shortly. I just wanted to get explicitly on the record what the meaning of the clause, as amended, now is. I assume that it means that existing policy statements for example, the aviation White Paper would not stand up as a national policy statement for use by the new planning commission because it has not gone through the procedures set out in the Bill for a national policy statement, which means exhaustive consultation as well as parliamentary approval, and that on that basis an area such as aviation would require a new national policy statement before a major application was considered by the new planning commission.

John Healey: Let me try to help my hon. Friend, as I did on Report and Third Reading. To be absolutely clear, the amendments mean that all national policy statements, including those designated under clause 12, must meet the standards for appraisal of sustainability, for public consultation and for the parliamentary scrutiny set out in the Bill. In other words, the Secretary of State will not simply be able to dust off an existing policy and designate it as a national policy statement for the purposes of the Bill without meeting the requirements that the Bill sets out.

John McDonnell: I will leave it at that.

John Healey: I welcome that and wish my hon. Friend well in chairing the committee in two minutes' time. I suggest that he may need to get his skates on or he will be late for that appointment.

John McDonnell: I may return.

John Healey: I am not sure whether that is a threat or a promise from my hon. Friend, but if he does return we look forward to seeing him.
	On guidance, the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) has raised several concerns about amendments Nos. 53, 54 and 56. I look forward to hearing what she says about that, but I do not understand the reason for the Opposition's concern. Essentially, taken together the Lords amendments are part of strengthening the system in a way that allows the IPC and the Secretary of State not only, to issue guidance at specific points in the system as they did before, but to issue guidance covering any aspect of the pre-application requirements. They also strengthen the requirements for any promoter to have regard to that guidance.
	Finally, I come to amendment No. 65, which some of my hon. Friends are concerned about. I understand the intentions behind the amendments that they have tabled, which is to ensure that interested parties have access to advice and assistance where appropriate, but I am not sure that the amendment they propose is necessary or the best way to achieve that aim. The provision of legal advice and assistance under Lords amendment No. 65 is for the examining authority, which would include carrying out on behalf of the examining authorityin other words, the IPCoral questioning of any person making representations at a hearing. That latter potential function raises serious questions about whether that source of legal advice is appropriate as a source of legal advice and assistance to an interested party at a hearing.
	Secondly, clause 49 already ensures that the commission can provide advice to interested parties about the application process or on how to make representations. If the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey is that interested parties and local groups might be priced out of being able to secure representation for themselves, he will be aware of our announcements to increase substantially this year, and in following years, provision for the Planning Aid system. That is designed exactly to provide advice to community groups and to ensure that individuals who might not otherwise get it can be represented.

David Drew: I recognise and welcome the additional moneys that will be made available through Planning Aid, but just so that I can be clear, will the Minister tell me whether Planning Aid can represent third parties at an examinationthe process by which the public can express their opinions? May I have it on the record that Planning Aid can do that and that it does not stop before we get to a formal examination?

John Healey: The purpose of Planning Aid, as my hon. Friend knows, is to provide assistance to community groups so that they can develop their understanding of the planning system, allowing them to communicate and express their views or concerns better. It is also there to help individuals who, without assistance, would be excluded from the planning process. It is not necessarily there to fund legal advice and representation.
	Several other significant areas have been previously covered in debate. First, we have something that was urged upon us, and was described as a safety valve for IPC decisions. This area, and a couple of others, relates to the final stage of the new process, which is the consideration of applications. One of the main concerns was that the Bill did not provide for a safety valve if the system was not working. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made a commitment on Report, in response to concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts), that we would carry out a review of how the IPC was working two years after its establishment. We agreed to table amendments to the Bill in the other place allowing the grounds on which Ministers can intervene in applications made to the IPC, and take decisions, to be extended if the review reveals problems. Lords amendments Nos. 76, 77 and 174 meet that commitment.
	The second concern about the final stage of the new process relates to opportunities for the public to participate. While the Bill enhances the right for the public to have a greater say at all three stages in the process rather than one, some have questioned the way in which it provides for the IPC to probe, test and assess evidence through direct questions rather than cross-examination. Our amendments strengthened the process and reassured people, making it clear to them that cross-examination was not ruled out in the new regime and that it would be allowed where the commission considered it necessary.
	I hope that it has been useful to touch on the main points where there has been substantive strengthening of the Bill during its passage in the other place.

Clive Betts: May I ask my right hon. Friend to reflect on one area that he has not mentioned? The Government have clearly given further scope to what should be a nationally significant infrastructure project. We discussed the matter in Committee, and we were concerned that the Department for Transport was extending the number of projects that would end up with the commission because any trunk road, or an alteration to one, would be caught. At the time, I thought that the Government would reflect on the matter and get back to us. The Local Government Association is concerned that fairly small alterations would be caught in the net even if they did not have any national significance.

John Healey: My hon. Friend's point is not about the provisions and what constitutes a nationally significant infrastructure project, which would be dealt with under the new regime, but about a Government commitment. This relates to examination by the Department for Transport of planning applications that it deals with which would not necessarily fall within the remit of the IPC, but which could nevertheless be properly and rightly devolved to local authorities as local planning authorities. That work continues, and my colleagues in the Department for Transport will be able to update my hon. Friend and the House when they have concluded their consideration of those questions.
	I commend Lords amendment No. 1 to the House, and I ask that we deal with the other amendments in the way that I have indicated.

Jacqui Lait: This enormous group of amendments covers a wide number of subjects, most of which we have discussed exhaustively in this House. Their lordships have also discussed them exhaustively, and the cumulative effect is that the Government have listened. However, some fundamental issues have not been addressed, and they are the basis of our objections to much of the Bill.
	I begin, however, by congratulating the Government on taking into account concerns about climate change and design. That represents a great step forward from the original Bill, which talked about sustainable development. However, on close reading of the Lords amendment, one is slightly suspicious that it could turn into a box-ticking amendment. We are attracted to amendment (a) tabled by the hon. Members for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew) because it would toughen up the terms of Lords amendment No. 8 and ensure, one hopes, that it is not a box-ticking exercise. We have had enough of such box ticking in the past 10 years, and we now hope to get some action.
	I know that a lot of people want to speak, but may I welcome briefly the Minister's reassurances to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on the old policies? Aviation was the classic example that we all cited while trying to get the Minister to understand that the European directives on strategic environmental assessment had to be incorporated in legislation, and that the existing references to aviation in the Bill were not up to that standard.
	Lords amendment No. 7 is at the core of our objection to the system that the Government are setting up. At the risk of repeating myself for the nth time, we believe that national policy statements that do not have Parliament's approval through a substantive vote will not speed up the delivery of infrastructure projects, which we all agree are needed. Recent warnings were issued about possible shortfalls in the electricity supply this winter, let alone in 2015. I believe that the first new power stations could be on stream in 2020, so we have a genuine problem just with energy, let alone with the other infrastructure that needs updating. There is therefore no argument about the need for the national policy statements; the argument is about securing a democratic lock on those policy statements, through a substantive vote in Parliament.
	I may be interpreting the Lords amendment incorrectly and I am happy to be told that I am wrong. However, under clause 9(4)(a),
	either House of Parliament makes a resolution with regard to the proposal.
	That implies a vote. Subsection 4(b) provides that
	a committee of the House of Commons makes recommendations with regard to the proposal.
	We believe that either House of Parliament should make those recommendations, and we therefore agree with Lords amendment No. 7. Without a substantive vote in Parliament, the national policy statements will be vulnerable to challenges in the courts, which means that as soon as they go to court, delay is built into the process. That would have the same impact on planning applications as what happened to the lengthy applications for terminal 5, Sizewell and all the examples that we have cited so often.
	We recognise and accept that Ministers make decisions on the matter; we are discussing a ministerial recommendation to Parliament. If a Government have a majority, a substantive vote in Parliament should be deliverable. There will be inevitable controversy about national policy statements, but a vote should be deliverable. The statement would therefore go through the same process as any Bill that becomes an Act. Once the statement receives a substantive vote in Parliament, the Government's basic argument for the Infrastructure Planning Commission falls because the national policy statement becomes a parliamentary statement, with Parliament's approval, and the Secretary of State or a Minister can easily make a decision about the detailed planning application at the final stage, thereby providing another democratic lock on the planning system, which the IPC does not deliver.
	I want to put it on record again that, should the IPC be set up, we would look to end its existence as fast as possible because we believe that the British people expect democratically accountable Ministers, who are elected by them, not an unaccountable quango, to be responsible for such decisions. If today's announcement is to mean anything, many of those quangos should be abolished.

Clive Betts: Many of us are intrinsically sympathetic to the view that there should be a vote in Parliament on matters such as national policy statements. However, as we discussed at length in Committee, the problem is that the other place would also have a vote and, given that the Parliament Act does not cover such votes, we would hand a veto to the other place over all national policy statements. That does not amount to much democratic accountability.

Jacqui Lait: The hon. Gentleman is right that we have had endless debates about the matter. However, he does not credit their lordships' House with the sense of responsibility with which I credit it.

Clive Betts: Trust.

Jacqui Lait: IndeedI trust their lordships' House. The hon. Gentleman is long enough in the tooth as a Member of Parliament to know that Conservative Governments have as much difficulty as Labour Governments with their lordships' House. It is therefore a big thing for me to say that I would trust their lordships to ensure that national policy statements were treated exactly the same as Bills. Indeed, today we are debating a measure that has been heavily amended in the House of Lords. There is nothing to say that the House of Lords should not be able to recommend amendments to a national policy statement. It would then be up to the Government, with a majority, to assert their will.

Clive Betts: I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. Is she saying that a future Conservative Government would commit themselves to putting national policy statements before both Houses, that they would be amendable, with full time for debating them, and that the Parliament Act should apply so that the will of this House would prevail in the end?

Jacqui Lait: I am saying that I am sure that their lordships' House would be sufficiently responsible to understand the Government's will, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises that.
	The amendments clearly show our objections in principle to the measure. I do not want to take up too much more time because we are running short of it and several other hon. Members wish to comment.
	We are pleased that the Government have acceded to our request about reviewing statements. The Minister asked me why I was unhappy about amendments Nos. 53 to 56. The original Bill mentioned community involvement, but the amendments delete that reference. If one factor is key to where our planning system currently goes wrong, it is that the community does not feel involved. The phrase community involvement is essentially replaced by, There will be guidance. The guidance may well include community involvement, but it is not as explicit as it was in the original measure. If the Minister cares to reassure me, even briefly, I will be happy.
	We have argued about the right to be heard throughout the Bill's passage. We believe that it is still not strong enough. We welcome the legal advice to the commission to which the Government have agreed, but we would like it to be strengthened so that the right to be heard is guaranteed. I was interested in the answer that the hon. Member for Stroud received about Planning Aid because that was my interpretationand, indeed, Planning Aid's interpretationof what it can do. A difficulty remains with people's ability to get legal representation.
	I was interested in the Minister's comments on amendment No. 76, which deals with the Secretary of State's ability to call applications in. The Minister said that it covered only the review of the IPC. Again, I am prepared to be correctedI am not a lawyerbut the amendment states:
	The Secretary of State may by order specify other circumstances in which section 108 is to apply in relation to an application for an order granting development consent.
	That suggests that the Secretary of State can call anything in. If that is the case, why establish an IPC? The power is too wide. I cannot believe that the drafting is so loose that my interpretation is correct, but I would be grateful for the Minister's clarification so that we all know where we stand.
	With apologies for taking so long, I commend our amendments to the Lords amendments.

Paul Truswell: I rise to speak to amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 8, which stands in my name and that of various hon. Members across the House. One of the reasons why my Back-Bench colleagues and I tabled the amendment was to give my right hon. Friend the Minister the opportunity to join the pantheon of our Front-Bench heroes, to which many of his colleagues have recently been elevated.  [ Laughter. ] No, no, laugh you notthe roll-call is impressive. It includes our right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), who made significant and welcome changes to the Local Transport Bill; and our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, our hon. Friend the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), who accepted amendments to the Climate Change Bill and the Energy Bill. Indeed, I think that our hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) is still recovering from the shock.
	My right hon. Friend the Minister has a reputation for being somewhat austere, which his earlier comments reinforced. He seems to believe that it is his solemn duty to prevent Back Benchers from becoming over-intoxicated by too much of a good thing and that he therefore cannot accede to our amendment (a). However, all the changes to the Bills that I have listed demonstrate a willingness to listen, reflect and then act. All those changes reflect a degree of joined-up thinking in the crusade, as it were, to tackle climate change. The signatories to my amendment (a) believe that it is necessary for the Bill to do exactly the same thing.
	It is particularly vital in the context of the 80 per cent. emissions target that we achieve a radical change in new infrastructure, in order to move to a low-carbon economy. In that context, we welcome certain provisions in the Bill, such as the climate change duty associated with local and regional plans. However, the Government have placed no duty on the IPC to consider climate change, because they argue that national policy statements will deal with climate issues. However, that argument is compromised by the fact that the IPC can depart from NPSs in defined circumstances.
	Even if we take the argument about national policy statements at face value, however, we still need to place a strong duty on the Secretary of State to consider climate change when drawing up NPSs. However, Lords amendment No. 8 to clause 10, which relates to sustainable development, is so weak as to make little difference to the actions of the Secretary of State when it comes to the crunch. As my right hon. Friend the Minister has said, Lords amendment No. 8 says that
	the Secretary of State must (in particular) have regard to the desirability of...mitigating, and adapting to, climate change.
	Despite my right hon. Friend's protestations, that feels very weak indeed. Desirability smacks of the language of aspirationmerely an objective to have in mind, but not necessarily to be achieved. The obligation on the Secretary of State is couched in language that would make it difficult for a court or anyone else to put a strong construction on the provisions.
	Even if that were not the case, there is an inherent problem with almost any conceivable clause relating to sustainable development, precisely because the language of sustainable development is imprecise. The phrase is not defined in the Billas far as I am aware, it is not defined in any legislationand even non-statutory definitions are couched in open and vague terms. Amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 8 seeks to replace the word desirability with a stronger construction, which places a duty on the Secretary of State to have
	due regard to the need to...mitigate and adapt to climate change.
	I should add at this juncture that we took the liberty of lifting those words from other Government legislation, so one would hope that that legislation was subject to the sort of scrutiny that

John McDonnell: Plagiarism.

Paul Truswell: Indeed, we have to plead guilty to that charge.

Julia Goldsworthy: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could enlighten us as to which legislation he lifted that wording from, so that the Minister can go away and double-check that the other legislation is untested.

Paul Truswell: That is like the Schleswig-Holstein question. I have forgotten the answer, but I assure the hon. Lady that the wording was indeed lifted and that I will give her that information in due course.
	The formulation that we propose strengthens the weak notion of desirability, replacing it with need or necessity. That would elevate climate change to an unavoidable consideration, even though it would be sufficiently flexible to leave room for argument. Lord Hunt suggested in the other place that the Climate Change Bill, and particularly the 80 per cent. emissions target, would deal with all those issues. He also asserted, if my reading of his words is right, that the Government could not be constrained by a duty to mitigate climate change, because that implied that all national policy statements would achieve that goal, when it was clear that they would not.
	However, signing up to an 80 per cent. emissions reduction target has no direct impact on national policy statements, unless we create a direct link between the Climate Change Bill and the Planning Bill. For the reasons that I have just given, I submit that that link is weak to say the least. The Climate Change Bill makes no reference to the Planning Bill; indeed, it appears that we are being asked to take that relationship almost on trust. The reality is that achieving an 80 per cent. emissions reduction target will require radical new signals to industry. Much of that will have a positive economic impact, particularly in the field of renewable energy and other technologies, through research, design and manufacturing.
	However, Lord Hunt seems to have suggested that a strong climate change duty might compromise energy policy, and that climate change has to be balanced by other priorities. That simply misunderstands both the opportunity for a low-carbon economy and the scale of the threat of climate change. In any eventI would be the first to admit thisour proposed amendment is not a straitjacket; it is a proposed subsection to an already quite weak clause setting out a sustainable development duty. In that context, our slightly more directive proposed subsection leaves, for better or worse, a considerable margin for discretion on the part of the Secretary of State. However, we believe that we have nudged that obligation in the right direction.
	We cannot allow the Planning Bill to act as a massive bypass around the Climate Change Bill or climate change obligations. For that reason, I wish to push amendment (a) to the vote at the appropriate time.

Julia Goldsworthy: To follow what the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) has said, Lords amendments Nos. 2 and 8 concede an important principle, concession on which we struggled to get in this place and had to go to the other end of the Palace for the Government finally to concede.
	However, there is still value in pressing for that extra step forward. I, too, was disappointed by just how qualified is the phrase
	have regard to the desirability of.
	As the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) said, that smacks of a box-ticking exercise just to prove that regard has been given, rather than an effort to make a material impact on any decisions made. I urge the Minister to think again if he wants to send a clear signal, because amendment (a) would make it clear that the duty was categorical and not qualified.
	There is also an important point about the need for good-quality design as well as environmental sustainability. Amendment No. 1 builds on that important principle in the Bill. On the environmental theme, it is good that under amendment No. 102 regional development agencies would have such an obligation.
	The review of national policy statements is another significant area covered by this group of amendments. We welcome amendments Nos. 3, 9, 10 and 11, which set out more clearly the circumstances in which the statements can be reviewed. The Liberal Democrats hope for a rigorous scrutiny process for the statements, involving both Houses of Parliament. Although the amendments do not build in the level of scrutiny that we think desirable, it will none the less be important that work that has been done is not undermined by an errant Secretary of State reviewing and changing the statements at will. It must be welcome that there will have to be a significant change in circumstances, which was not anticipated at the time of the initial statement, for those changes to take place.
	The amendment, along with amendments No. 4 and Nos. 70 to 72, allows for part of a statement to be reviewed, so it would prevent the baby from being thrown out with the bathwater. If a review is needed, only parts of the statement for which the circumstances have manifestly changed should be reviewed. We also welcome amendments Nos. 20 to 24, which make similar changes to the provisions relating to any legal challenges that may be brought against the NPS. In a similar vein, amendment No. 7 would give the House of Lords the right to report on statements in its Select Committees, and to expect a response. That is important, right and proper, but I would have preferred a greater role for both Houses, with voting on the statements themselves.
	Amendments Nos. 12 to 19 on retrospection are welcome. They respond to concerns that were raised in another place, not least by our former colleague from North Cornwall, Lord Tyler, that clause 12 could introduce elements of retrospective legislation by allowing previous Government statements of policy to become designated national policy statements without proper scrutiny. The air transport White Paper was of particular concern in that regard. We are particularly pleased that clause 12(4) is to be excised from the Bill to ensure that the Parliamentary requirements in clause 9 will have to be met afresh when an old policy statement is to be designated as an NPS.
	We also welcome amendment No. 63, which removes the word exceptionally from the provision about people being given oral hearings. I was disappointed by the Minister's reluctance to give local people their say, but it is good that there has been some movement. However, amendments (a) to (c) to amendment No. 65 would strengthen the measure further, and it is absolutely right that the same rights should be extended to people who are cross-examined as are given to those making representations to the commission.
	I pay tribute to my colleague Baroness Hamwee, who worked hard with the Minister in the Lords to have amendments Nos. 68 and 69 added to the Bill. We consider that to be a quiet, but significant, Liberal Democrat achievement. It is vital for local planning authorities' policies to be considered along with national policy statements when the commission takes decisions. Amendment No. 69 ensures that the panel or council that takes the decision on an application may have regard to conditions for deciding applications that are outwith the NPS. That is certainly welcome.
	I also welcome the Minister's clarification of amendments Nos. 76 to 78, because it was not clear to me from reading them that they were the Government's way of saying that the IPC's functions will be reviewed in two years' time. I am glad that that safety valve is there, but that could be made more explicit, as that seems a roundabout way of doing things. Some important issues have been raised, but I shall conclude now, as I want to give the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) time to speak to his important amendment.

Jim Devine: I shall speak to amendment No. 215, which deals with section 10 of the Water (Scotland) Act 1980, which hon. Members will know is my bedtime reading. The amendment deals with the responsibility of factoring companies such as Greenbelt.
	In the past 15 to 20 years, there has been a big change in the provision of factoring services in planning applications to local communities. That used to be the responsibility of local councils, which adopted common land and land that was provided for local communities, such as land for swing parks. That service was paid for by council tax, or poll tax under the Conservative Administration. However, that changed about 20 years ago as a result of the explosion in private house building throughout the UK. After that, councils no longer adopted such areas because of the work load involved.
	Since then, there has been a growth of companies such as Greenbelt. During the planning process, we have seen private companies taking over the responsibility from councils; we have seen lawyers selling the houses and not advising their constituents or clients that they would have to pick up an additional payment of up to 400 a year; and we have seen sales departments failing to mention the additional burden.
	Until recently, it was possible to vote out these land maintenance companies, but sadly, companies such as Greenbelt have changed the rules. Now such companies buy the common land in agreement with the contractor and the house purchasers. In practice that means that, regardless of the service provided by such companies, people cannot sack them. Quite frankly, it is a disgraceful situation. People now find themselves responsible not only for cutting grass and the maintenance of swing parks in their areas, but even for their drainage systems. If the drainage systems go wrong, they have to pick up the tab. A company actually has the right to charge people for that.
	Let me provide an example. There are 11 estates in my constituency and I recall that an abandoned car was found in one of them. The company charged more than 100 houses 2p a quarter: it had to phone the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and claimed that that cost 2, so it charged each household 2p. As I said, the company charges up to 400 a year and it behaves in a quite unacceptable and bullying manner. Anyone who refuses to pay because of the lack of service very quickly receives a threatening letter from the company, telling them that they will be blacklisted.
	When I first mentioned the company in this place, it wrote to Mr. Speaker and told me that I had no right to raise issues about it in this House and that it had every right to do whatever it wanted because it owned the common land and could charge what it wanted. If it did not provide a service, people still basically had to pay. This is Farepak for home owners, yet this company is operating from the highlands to Birmingham, in Wales and in Northern Ireland. Its behaviour is, quite frankly, outrageous.
	One of my constituents, Paula Hoogerbrugge, set up a website to highlight the deficiencies of, and threats and intimidation from, the company. It then contacted her employersshe is a senior public relations manager with British Telecomto tell them that she was mixing with extreme left-wingers, when all she was doing was standing up for the residents.

John Robertson: I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend's flow, but he is talking about extreme left-wingers and I am wondering who they were. My hon. Friend makes a very good case. Does he agree that companies such as this have to be answerable to somebodyand somebody in this regard should be the elected representative, who can take on constituents' cases? If that is not allowed, we need to look seriously into the law and find out how to bring these people to book.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I hope that when the hon. Member replies, he will remember the amendment that is under discussion at the moment.

Jim Devine: I will come back to the amendment, Madam Deputy Speaker, when I talk about the other services provided. Amendment No. 215 is relevant. My hon. Friend is right. Companies such as Greenbelt buy up common land and gain ownership of it so that they can provide little or no service. As he says, it is very difficult to get rid of them, so we should be looking into changing the law in order to rectify the problem.
	One crucial area of responsibilityamendment No. 215 is relevant, Madam Deputy Speakeris compensation for damage under section 10 of the Water (Scotland) Act 1980. In the past, it was the responsibility of councils to deal simply and purely with water drainage systems. That is no longer the case. People are now paying 400 a year to this company for the service. It was initially responsible for the management of common land and the swing parks, but it is now taking on the responsibility for water drainage systems. That affects my constituents and many others. Eleven estates in my constituency deal directly with this company.
	In the past, under the Land Drainage Act 1991, the council would provide the necessary service. In the event of a flood, for instance, it would provide services to repair the damage caused by inadequate drainage. That duty has now fallen to Greenbelt and similar companies, and the charges are being passed on to my constituents.

Rob Marris: My hon. Friend is speaking eloquently to Lords amendment No. 215. The amendment relates to schedule 12, which itself relates to Scotland. My hon. Friend has referred to the activities of such rip-off companies in other parts of the country, including my own in the west midlands. Do we need legislation in England, for example, similar to that which he is propounding for Scotland?

Jim Devine: That is an interesting point. The problem is that some of the responsibility is devolved and some is reserved. I would argue that monopolies legislation is relevant. Why should my constituents, and literally hundreds throughout the United Kingdom, have absolutely no choice? Devolved issues include local government responsibilities, through planning legislation and the Water (Scotland) Act.
	I want to raise another important point with my right hon. Friend the Minister. I consider it important that we have set up an all-party group on land maintenance

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying a little wide of the amendment.

Jim Devine: I shall conclude my speech, Madam Deputy Speaker. I believe that the Lords amendment has major implications for land maintenance companies, and for the planning procedure as a whole. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will agree to meet us to discuss the issue.

John Healey: This has been a useful debate, in which we have covered a good deal of ground.
	I echo the tribute paid by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) to Lady Hamwee. Let me add that Lord Dixon-Smith and Lady Andrewsrepresenting the Governmenttogether did a very good job in strengthening the Bill, and that, throughout the process, Lady Andrews and I have been supported very well by excellent officials, to whom I also pay tribute.
	The other placeand this, Madam Deputy Speaker, relates to the content of the amendments that I wish the House to accepthas strengthened the Bill in a number of significant areas: the production of national policy statements, parliamentary scrutiny and debate on national policy statements, public consultation
	 It being three hours after the commencement of proceedings , Madam deputy Speaker  put the Question already proposed from the Chair, pursuant to Order [this day].
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	Madam deputy Speaker  then proceeded to put the remaining Questions necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at that hour.
	 Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to [some with Special Entry].

Paul Truswell: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I said at both the beginning and the end of my speech that I wished to press my amendment to a Division.

Madam Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman certainly did, but at that point we were dealing with Lords amendment No. 1. Had time allowed it, I would have called the hon. Gentleman to move his amendment formally. Unfortunately, we ran out of time.
	Committee appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendments Nos. 115 and 160: Julia Goldsworthy, John Healey, Mrs. Jacqui Lait, Mr. Andrew Love and Mr. Dave Watts to be members of the Committee; John Healey to be the Chairman of the Committee; Three to be the quorum of the Committee. [Mr. Watts.]
	 To withdraw immediately.
	 Reasons for disagreeing to certain Lords amendments reported, and agreed to; to be communicated to the Lords.

Data Protection and Freedom of Information

Queen's recommendation signified.

Jack Straw: I beg to move,
	That, in respect of service from 30th November 2007, the salary of the Information Commissioner shall be at a yearly rate of 140,000.
	The position and role of Information Commissioner arise out of two sets of decisions by this House and the other place: the Data Protection Acts of 1984 and 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Even when the post was simply concerned with data protection, its duties could involve a conflict with the Government of the day, since the commissioner acts on behalf of the individual to protect personal information held on those individuals, not least by Government. Still more, there is a fundamental conflict of interest in the commissioner's role under the Freedom of Information Act, which this House and the other place passed after much debate in 1999 and 2000and, indeed, strengthened as a result of pressure from both sides of the House and in both Houses, including in respect of making Parliament subject to the Act. That Act involves enforcing the public's right to have access to information against public authorities and the Government where, by definition, the issue will only land on the desk of the Information Commissioner if the public authority has refused to provide the information requested.
	The role of the commissioner, therefore, is one that requires great independence and integrity, legal facility and an ability to make difficult and balanced judgments. I think I speak for the whole House in expressing my gratitude to Richard Thomas for the way he has conducted himself in this post through the birth pangs of the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act. He showed that he has those qualities of independence, integrity, legal facility and an ability to make difficult and balanced judgments.
	The Government have carefully considered the commissioner's salary in the light of the changes to his role and responsibilities since it was last reviewed in March 2001, shortly after the Freedom of Information Act was formally passed by this House and received Royal Assent, but a full four years before it came into force. The extraordinary prevailing economic conditions quite properly place constraints on public sector pay settlements. However, the Government position is that the particular circumstances of the Information Commissioner's case warrant the increase set out.
	There are three reasons for that. First, the world has changed considerably since the data protection registrar was originally appointed in 1984 to safeguard personal information. There is no need to explain to the House the astonishing revolution in the collection and dissemination of personal information of all kinds as a result of the IT and internet revolution. Secondly, the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 effectively doubled the range of the commissioner's responsibilities, combining those for data protection and freedom of information in one job description.
	Recently, there have been two further sets of changes, both of which add to the commissioner's responsibilities. First, as all Members are aware, there has been great public and parliamentary concern about data security within both the public and private sectors. This has led to a great deal more work for the Information Commissioner and, so far as Government are concerned, it has led to us proposing to the commissionerwhich he has acceded tospot checks of Government Departments and the production by him of an annual surveillance report.
	Secondly, and more fundamentally, on 25 October 2007 my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced that he had asked Professor Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, and Mr. Thomas, the Information Commissioner, to undertake a major review of data sharing in the public and private sectors. The report of the review was published on 11 July 2008 and, in a written ministerial statement today, I have announced the Government's response to it. The consequence is that the commissioner will be taking on further responsibilities, including greater inspection powers to ensure data protection compliance, powers to demand information necessary to assess compliance, a statutory duty to publish a data sharing code of practice, and a new tiered notification fee with an extra penalty for false registration. Those changes will improve the transparency and accountability of organisations dealing with personal information, and that is important if we are to regain public confidence in the handling and sharing of that personal information. The significant expansion of the commissioner's responsibilities has been matched by an increase in the importance and status of his post.

James Brokenshire: The Lord Chancellor is talking about the Information Commissioner's enhanced role, and he referred to the statement he made today. Mention has been made of the new statutory code of practice on data sharing, and I note that the statement envisages some overarching governmental authority for the Secretary of State on that. What rights will the Information Commissioner have under these new plans to enforce that new statutory code? As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, this concept of data sharing is a sensitive one.

Jack Straw: The Information Commissioner will have considerable rights, and I shall give the hon. Gentleman the precise answer when I sum up, if I have your permission and that of the House to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker. He rightly says that data sharing is a sensitive issue, but data sharing is necessary and it is not prohibited by the Data Protection Act 1998, nor by subsequent legislation. What is crucial is that if data sharing takes place, it does so in strictly regulated circumstances, so that the data that are shared lawfully are regulated, and severe penalties and procedures are in place to ensure that data are not wrongly shared.

Rob Marris: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend that those protections are extremely necessary, but many of my constituents welcome data sharing because they are sick of being asked for the same information two, three, four or five times. The balance between the protections, on the one hand, and the ask once, use many times approach, on the other, is a difficult one to strike.

Jack Straw: My hon. Friend makes an important point, with which I think the whole House agrees. It illustrates the difficulty inherent in the role of the Information Commissionerhe must balance both sets of interests. Each of us have personal data that we wish to remain personal and to be used only for the purposes for which they were given. At the same time, we do not want to be bothered by having to provide the same data three or four times. In respect of the electoral register, there is provision for the data to be shared, because sharing council tax data and so on will greatly improve the comprehensive nature of the register and its integrity.

Simon Hughes: Following on from the intervention made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), I wonder whether the Secretary of State has addressed the fact that official organisations often ask for informationfor example, if one is involved in a telephone exchange with them about some matterbut do not make it clear that supplying it is voluntary, rather than compulsory. Could clear guidelines be given to show that where a Government official or agency of Government asks someone questions, they should indicate that the provision of that information is voluntaryone can give it, but one is at liberty not to do so? An example of such information might be an office phone number or a date of birth, which may not be required for the exchange.

Jack Straw: I shall certainly follow that up, because it is an area in which the Government must ensure that what happens on the ground reflects the law and practices.
	I wish to make two final sets of points. The first is about the way in which this role has moved from being that of Data Protection Registrar, which was a fairly modest role out of the public eye, to that of Information Commissioner, which is a large role in the public eye. The change has been a considerable one. The Information Commissioner is in the media almost every day. Last year, he had to appear before nine Select Committees, which, I believe is more than any Minister has had to do in a year.
	Secondly, I am happy to respond to questions about the Information Commissioner's remuneration, but I should just say that the level of remuneration was carefully scrutinised within government and it is not only comparable with, but, in many respects, lower than that for many other posts that bear less responsibility. With those considerations in mind, I commend the motion to the House.

Nick Herbert: I suspect that the Secretary of State for Justice might agree that the timing of this proposal is unfortunate. On a day when the Government have been forced to announce significant future tax rises for working families, the House is considering a significant salary increase for a senior public servant, amounting to a 40 per cent. increase in salary, from 100,000 a year to 140,000. Of course, that will be backdated to last November, which means that for this year we are talking about an 80 per cent. increase. We must therefore consider this motion carefully, especially in view of how the public may regard it.
	I suppose that Mr. Thomas will at least be glad that he has escaped the new top rate of income tax band that the Government have announced today. It is true that the additional sums of public money that will have to be found to fund his salary will be a drop in the ocean compared with the 1 trillion of national debt that this country now faces.
	I sympathise with the Secretary of State in that we are having to decide a salary increase for a serving official, as opposed to deciding whether an increase for a new occupant of the post, as yet unnamed, would be merited. Nevertheless, that is made easier for us by the fact that the official concerned is of clear stature, and has spoken out with authority and independence on matters of data protection. He can command the confidence of the whole House.
	It would have been more helpful to the House if we had had some information about the justification for the increases in advance, although I accept that the Secretary of State has raised the issue with some of us beforehand. His comments about the proposed increase were fair. First, the position is increasingly important, as are the issues involved. We need to ensure that someone who is exceptionally able, and has sound judgment and experience, holds the position of Information Commissioner. As the Secretary of State pointed out, the office holder now also has to be comfortable in the public eye.
	Mr. Thomas has certainly demonstrated the independence that the House requires. Only today he publicly confirmed that, despite the Secretary of State for Children and Families stating that he had contacted the Information Commissioner's Office about releasing certain sensitive matters

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Member, and other hon. Members, that the motion that we are discussing relates to the salary of the said person.

Nick Herbert: Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was just pointing out that one of the justifications for a significant salary rise was that the Information Commissioner has to exercise great judgment and independence and that, only today, he had demonstrated that independence by being willing to say something publicly about a claim made by a Cabinet Minister. That reinforces the need for a person of stature and quality in that position.
	The second reason that the Secretary of State for Justice gave for the salary increase was the increase in work load that the Information Commissioner has experienced. The pay is being backdated, but the work load has clearly increased in the year to which the backdating will apply. In his annual report in July, Mr. Thomas pointed out:
	After such a tumultuous year the ICO is set to grow significantly.
	Of course, he has had to deal not least with the serial data losses over which the Government have presided, beginning with the loss of data from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs last year. Again, that has involved him in difficult decisions and in exercising his judgment about what to say publicly on the matter. That underlines the importance of his independence.
	The third point is that given the seniority of the Information Commissioner's position, the increase in salary will not put him out of line with other public sector salaries. Indeed, given his work load and the importance of his position, it could be argued that his salary is low in relation to those of other public officials.

Keith Vaz: Parliament has also added to the burden on the Information Commissioner. The report by the Select Committee on Home Affairs on the surveillance society requested that he produce an annual report to Parliament. That would also justify an increase not just in his salary but in the funding for his office.

Nick Herbert: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is clear that the work load of the Information Commissioner has increased considerably since the incumbent took office.

Bob Spink: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the powers that be have just reduced the chairman of the Electoral Commission proposed pay of 150,000 a year to only 100,000 a year? Does not that give a lead as to what salary should be set in this case? It should not be 140,000 a year but nearer 100,000.

Nick Herbert: I do not think that the two situations are related. Compared with chairman of the Electoral Commission, the Information Commissioner will be working for a different periodfor more days in the week, I think, than the current chairman. It is not possible to make the easy read-across that the hon. Gentleman suggests.
	I was making the point that given the Information Commissioner's work load and his seniority, he is paid rather less than a number of other senior public officials. We know that 800 local government officials now earn more than 100,000 a yearan increase of 27 per cent. on the previous year. Some 132 council managers are paid more than the annual salary of a Cabinet Minister. It is also true that the Information Commissioner has been in the same salary bracket since 2005-06. I do not think that it is sensible to fix a senior public servant's salary in such a way and to have a particularly large rise to compensate for that fact, rather than making arrangements whereby his salary would increase sensibly in line with other salaries in the public sector year on year.
	Finally, it is clear that the Information Commissioner's responsibilities are growing. Today's announcement of additional powers for the Information Commissioner is largely welcome. There are concerns about the proposals for data sharing, which we will no doubt debate on a different day, but they underline the fact that the commissioner, who is responsible for a growing annual budgetit is now 16 million a yearand for 260 staff, will have to deal with those thorny issues. He will face continuing challenges. No doubt he will have more cases of Government data loss with which to contend over the course of the next few months, if the last few are anything to go by. He will have to deal with ensuring data protection in the private sector, too, and with the sensitive matter of data protection issues relating to Members of this House. We hope that he will maintain his firm resistance to the planned communications database.
	The Opposition's conclusion is that data issues are no longer peripheral; they are central to public concerns about personal privacy and to good government. Therefore, the Information Commissioner must be rewarded appropriately. We need to ensure that the post has an occupant of stature, quality and integrity. It is vital that that person has those qualities and can maintain the independence that the office demands.

Simon Hughes: I have generally the same analysis of the position as the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert): it is somewhat ironic that, today of all days, we are debating this apparently very significant increase in salary. My initial instinct was to be concerned about the increase. I looked at the figures since we first had an Information Commissionera post first created in 2000-01, when the salary was in the 70,000 to 75,000 range. It was still about the same when Elizabeth France finished and Richard Thomas took over. It has gone up gradually. Until today, it has been just about 100,000.
	The proposal is that it should go up by 40,000, as the Secretary of State for Justice says. I am persuaded, having looked at the evidence and compared similar jobs in the public service, that that is the right remuneration. I understand that the increase is justified by two arguments, the first of which is that the Information Commissioner has a huge additional workload. The right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who is Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, has just referred to one additional piece of work. The Secretary of State referred to the fact that the Prime Minister asked the commissioner to co-author another investigatory report. The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills), has today given a written answer that deals with further work in the pipeline, so I am persuaded that plenty of extra work has come and plenty of additional work will be done.

David Taylor: Did the hon. Gentleman hear the figures quoted a moment ago by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert)? I hope that I heard him correctly, and perhaps he will intervene on the hon. Gentleman if I did not. He said that the commissioner was responsible for a budget of 16 million a year. If so, is that not rather out of kilter with, for instance, the Secretary of State for Health, who is responsible for budget of at least 96 billion a year, which is a multiple of 6,000 times that of the data protection and freedom of information commissioner? There is something adrift, is there not?

Simon Hughes: There is a serious point: we do not look at these salaries in the round. The proposal is for one salary for one person for one post; some salaries either come to the whole House or go to a Committee upstairs, and we should look at them comparatively. I take that point. There is an argument that Ministers, who are politicians, might for all sorts of reasons be paid relatively much less than people who are not, but we certainly ought to have the debate.
	I also looked at some of the comparisons, as did the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs. The Library gave me the figures. The chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission gets paid 92,000 for a three-day week. The chair of the Office for Legal Complaints gets 70,000 for 80 days a year. The Children's Commissioner gets 175,000 a yearconsiderably more than the Information Commissioner's salary will be after today.
	The other argument in favour is that I understand that Richard Thomas is due to retire next year and therefore this will be the salary advertised for his successor, and a good range of applicants is needed for the job.
	However, I have not heard the Secretary of State for Justice deal with the one thing that is an oddity about the motion. The salary increase will be backdated to the end of November last year, and that seems a very odd thing for us to do. We should determine the salary either in advance or when it comes up for change. I should be grateful for an explanation of why, all but 12 months later, we will backdate it all that way. That seems to be less justifiable.
	I join the absolute, clear support for Mr. Richard Thomas as Information Commissioner given by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs and on behalf of the Government. Mr. Thomas has done an unarguably good, competent and robust job. The reason why I am happy to speak in support of the commissioner being allowed to do his job better, if that is the outcomeand I have a request for one bit of his work to be improved if he is going to get all this extra moneyis that he has done some good things in his term of office. He was clear that there should be criminal sanctions, including jail, for people who breach data privacy laws. As one of the people in the House who was affected by that, I was glad that he took that robust attitude, because one case ended up with some people being sent to prison. We need clear sanctions for people who break the law for gain and sell data that they are not authorised to have in the first place.

Nick Brown: Hear, hear.

Simon Hughes: I am grateful to the Chief Whip for that. The sanctions are not just for politicians. They are much more important for non-politiciansmembers of the publicwho cannot defend themselves in places such as this.
	I am pleased that the commissioner robustly supported my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) in ensuring that details of the people who came to Downing street to discuss official business were revealed. It is important that that should be in the public domain and not a secret. I am very pleased that the commissioner was robust about the fact that local electoral officers should be banned from selling copies of the electoral register to marketing companies. That is not why people give their electoral information and it should not be used as a surrogate for a commercial operation.
	I am also pleased that the commissioner was very robust this summer about the folly of the Government super-database. In his annual report, he said that that would be
	a step too far for the British way of life.
	The figures are incredible. Given that more than 57 billion text messages are sent in this country every year, the concept of the database is almost impossible to imagine. The commissioner was clear that we should not walk into it blindfold and warned us robustly in July about that. He asked that Parliament scrutinise the Home Secretary's proposals clearly. I am glad that she is withdrawing, as I understand it, from her proposal to bring a Bill before us in the next Session and that she will consult further.
	The one critical thing that I want to sayI hope the commissioner's new salary will allow him to do this is about the need for him to deal with the backlog of cases much more effectively. Colleagues should be seriously worried about the backlog. In his annual

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should not stray too far into that. I remind him that the motion before the House is the salary of commissioner.

Simon Hughes: I am mindful of that and I am ensuring that I tie the salary that the commissioner will get if we vote it through to the fact that we expect a delivery in this respect.

Bob Spink: I am interested to learn why increasing the salary by 40 per cent. will enable the commissioner to do his job differently or better. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that he is currently delinquent in the way in which he delivers on his responsibilities and duties?

Simon Hughes: No I am not, but I am hoping that because his office and his salary are being debated in the House of Commons, the commissioner will understand that one of the consequences of a pay rise backdated by 12 months is that he must deal with the one fundamental weakness of his office, which is the backlog of work.
	I am told that in the last year the commissioner had nearly 25,000 inquiries and complaints, and that he prosecuted 11 individuals and organisations and received just over 2,500 freedom of information complaints and closed about the same number. However, although 30 per cent. of the decisions were in favour of the complainant and 25 per cent. upheld public authorities' original decisions, only 13 per cent. of valid cases were closed within 365 days. As he is to be given a vote of confidence by the House, I hope that those figures will give him cause to reflect on whether he should insist on the resources to support him. Those resources would come from the Government, and I hope that the Secretary of State will respond to that.
	Colleagues, including my persistent hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), tell me that there are regularly delays of one year, two years, or two and a half years. I know that in the past year, one case took 32 months from complaint to decision; that is reported in the annual report. Other cases took 30, 27 and 26 months. Only six of the 20 cases in which a start date was identified were dealt with in less than 12 months, and the average time was almost 19 months. May I ask for an assurance, through the Secretary of State, that we will have a much speedier answer to complaints?
	We are talking about a really important job. It is important that there is a robust, independent person making sure that the Government are accountable, and that the private sector is made accountable, as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) said. The Information Commissioner has not yet been able to include the private sector in his remit. For example, Network Rail is not yet included; for most people it is a public authority, but it is technically private, and therefore outwith his remit. We really do need answers quickly, because answers much delayed are often not much use. The debate and the justification move on, and so the relevance moves on. I hope that the Secretary of State can assure us that if the commissioner gets this large salary increase for an important job, we will have a much quicker turnaround of complaints from now on.

Rob Marris: I may have missed something when the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor opened the debate; perhaps he could remind the House on a point. It seems pretty odd for this House to be debating the salary of an individual, whatever their statuscivil servant, head of a non-departmental body or whatever. The remuneration is very large, particularly for an office based in Cheshire. It is not based in London, although the Information Commissioner may work there; I do not know. However, the office is in Wilmslow. There is also one in Northern Ireland and one elsewhere.
	I do not resile at all from what the Front Benchers of both main parties said about the motivation for the pay increasethe increase in work load and responsibilities. However, as a trade unionist, it strikes me as questionable, but not necessarily wrong, not to re-advertise a job when it changes so fundamentally. It may well be that if the post were re-advertised as a bigger job with a bigger salary, the current incumbent would walk the process and get the job. From the accolades given to him tonight, it seems that that might well be the case. However, the job is changing so fundamentally as to attract a 40 per cent. pay increase, and there is to be a big increase in work load. In the 2004 annual report, the body was described as a small office; we are now told that it has 260 staff. There has been an increase in responsibilities, and the Lord Chancellor's written statement today announces an intention to increase still further those responsibilities. Given that, I wonder why, instead of us simply increasing the salary through this motion, the post is not re-advertised as a bigger job for which the current incumbent, Mr. Thomas, could apply.

Bob Spink: Is the hon. Gentleman concerned, as I am, that no evidence has been put forward to justify the 40 per cent. increase to 140,000? The Hay Group and other firms provide salary comparison and evaluation services, but we see no evidence that there has been any job evaluation or weighting of the salary through comparison with salaries for similar jobs. Surely the Government should have provided such evidence for the House.

Rob Marris: I am sure that the Lord Chancellor would be able to supply that kind of information; it seems pretty inconceivable that there would be a motion for a 40 per cent. increase in pay without that kind of backroom work having been done. On the way in which the job has expanded, to follow on from my earlier intervention on the Lord Chancellor, there is arguably a bit of a conflict of interest between the job done by someone who is supposed to back freedom of information and the job done by a data protection registrar, who is, in a sense, against freedom of information. The firstthe data protection sideis to do with guarding information and making sure that it is released only as and when needed. However, the Information Commissioner's role involves a certain bias towards releasing information, so that we can have transparency in public life and proper scrutiny of the workings of Governmentand in due course, one would hope, the private sector, too. There is perhaps a bit of a conflict of interest there.
	If the Lord Chancellor is allowed to address us again before the motion is put to the House, I hope that we will have a little more information on the size of the operationthe number of staff and the budgetrun by the Information Commissioner. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) reported that the Information Commissioner had 260 staff and a budget of 16 million a year, which is not peanuts. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) said in an earlier intervention, when one compares the job with that of Secretary of State for Health, 140,000 is quite a lot of money for the Information Commissioner's role. To me, 260 staff does not sound like a huge operation, so it would be helpful to have some background information about the work load, the number of staff and the size of the operation, because we need to put the terms of the motion before us140,000 for the Information Commissionerin a broader context. What lies behind the debate is a notion that, to my great regret, has declined in the past 30 or 40 years in this country: the notion of public service.
	We, as politicians, all cop for it. We wish to serve the society in which we live, we value public service, and quite a number of us, including myself, have taken a pay cut to come here because we believe in public service. Of course we have the constant comparators with the private sector. Chief executives of local authorities are on between 150,000 and 200,000-plus a year. They have big budgets, they do responsible and hard jobs, and I take my hat off to them, but I still cherish the notion of public service. If we constantly make comparisons with the private sector, as I suspect we have done with this motion that calls for 140,000 for the Information Commissioner, we do a disservice not only to ourselves as politicians, but, more importantly, to the public whom we seek to serve, because I, for one, very much wish to revive the notion of public service in our society.

Simon Hughes: The hon. Gentleman started off by making a perfectly reasonable point about trade unions, but does he agree that if we seek to evaluate public service jobs such as that of local authority chief executive, a performance-related element should be considered, just as it is in the private sector? One thing that worries me is that last year, a target was set for 80 per cent. of complaints to be dealt with within a year, but, in the current report, the target is down to a smaller percentage. The objectivesthe outcomesseem to be less customer-oriented, yet the salary under discussion will go up significantly.

Rob Marris: The Lord Chancellor may be able to comment, but I cannot, because, to be fair to the Information Commissioner, the target partly depends on the resources that are available to him in his operations. If he has 260 staff, but to reach the targets, he needs, let us say, 360 staff, either he does not meet the targets

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Could I once again remind Members that the motion before the House is about the salary of the Information Commissioner?

Rob Marris: Indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker, but if I may say so, the salary set down in the motion should partly reflect the current postholder's performance, which is presumably the motivation for increasing it by 40 per cent. As I was saying, however, it is a shame that the notion of public service has declined so much that we have such comparators with the private sector all the time.
	Finally, on performance, the issue on which the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) just intervened, before I came to this House seven and a half years ago, I was a solicitor, and seven and a half years ago and more, the big law firms were getting out of performance-related pay, because they found that it did not work. I want people to be accountable, particularly in the public sector, when they earn that kind of moneyor will do if the motion is agreed to. I want them to be accountable, but I want that notion of public service, and one cannot simply measure it in commercial terms, because the ethos of public service is different and so important.

David Taylor: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Rob Marris: No, I am finishing now.

Richard Shepherd: I believe that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 was one of the great glories of this Labour Government. When people come to look over the history of new Labour, they will hold that the pledge given on freedom of information, and the Act that was written and came into force, was one of the great accomplishments of the bright, early days of new Labour.
	The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) cited the very great importance of the Information Commissioner, and the Act itself is a double-edged sword. It is an uncomfortable thing for Governments from time to time, as the hon. Gentleman said, and it has been of great use to newspapers, as people feared when the Act was passed, and to the general public, in understanding and exposing some of the curiosities of public life.
	However, has the commissioner done his job as successfully as he might? I ask that because I am meeting the stricture that you insisted on, Madam Deputy Speakerwe must be clear that this debate is about the salary of an individual. Although the salary of 120,000 does not look great

Simon Hughes: The salary is 140,000.

Richard Shepherd: Thank you. Although the salary of 140,000 does not look great in comparison with those of local authority chief executives, BBC executives and so on, we have to pursue the question raised by the hon. Members for North Southwark and Bermondsey and for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris).
	What has happened? There is a serious problemthe problem of delays. Is that the responsibility of someone whom I have always regarded as a fine public servant with a fine sense of public ethos? The statistics tickled out by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey are important. They are sourced from the Campaign for Freedom of Information, its remarkable director Maurice Frankel and all those who have supported it; I see supporters of the campaign in the Chamber this evening.
	Although the Information Commissioner's Office's published statistics state that more than 50 per cent. of all freedom of information complaints are dealt with within 30 days, that figure technically includes invalid complaints that are closed without investigation. Such complaints might involve a requester who has, for example, complained to the Information Commissioner without first asking the public authority to reconsider its original decisiona requirement under the 2000 Act. Alternatively, the person may have complained about bodies, such as private companies, that are not subject to the 2000 Act at all. Apart from invalid cases, only 13 per cent. of cases received during 2007-08 were closed within a year. The figure is extracted from the 2007-08 annual report of the Information Commissioner; page 21 lays it out clearly.
	A snapshot of the problem can be seen from the brief analysis that the Campaign for Freedom of Information carried out of decision notices published by the Information Commissioner during September 2008. Of those, 20 specifically identified the date on which the requester complained to the Information Commissioner's Office. As we have been told, in the longest decision there were 32 months between the date on which the requester complained to the Information Commissioner and the date on which the decision was issued. The next longest took 30 months, the third longest took nearly 27 months and the fourth and fifth longest decisions took 26 months. Only six of the 20 cases were dealt with in less than 12 months.
	The fastest of the investigations published in September took six months, and the next fastest took six months, seven months, eight months and 10 months respectively. The average time taken to investigate the 20 complaints was almost 19 months. The Information Commissioner's Office received some additional funding from the Ministry of Justice earlier this year, and at the same time arrangements were made to second central Government staff to the Information Commissioner's Office. However, it is not clear whether that will result in a significant reduction in delays.
	In 2007, the Information Commissioner's Office's objective was to deal with 80 per cent. of freedom of information complaints within 365 days, indicating that it expected to take more than a year in 20 per cent. of cases. However, according to the Information Commissioner's Office's corporate plan for 2008 to 2011, that target has been reduced; the current target is to deal with 70 per cent. of FOI complaints within a year. The new target therefore assumes that 30 per cent. of complaints will now take more than a year.

Rob Marris: Does the hon. Gentleman deduce from those statistics that the Information Commissioner should be paid more, that there should be more staff in his office, or both?

Richard Shepherd: The hon. Gentleman has an irritating habit of asking out of the air questions that are clearly part of the drift of the argument that one is making. Although that gives him a high score in the  Hansard reports of how many interventions he has made, we will get to where I was going anyway.

Rob Marris: The hon. Gentleman should not be so peevish.

Richard Shepherd: I have listened to the hon. Gentleman for a long time and watched his technique, and it rolls over this House. However, there is a serious and substantive issue to discuss.
	We understand that the commissioner's office is now fast-tracking some of the cases that it identifies as being of particular significance so that new complaints do not all automatically go to the back of the queue. That is useful development. Nevertheless, the delays are a major concern and a threat to the effective operation of the FOI Act. By the time that the information is disclosed, if that is what the commissioner requires, it may be too late for it to be of use to the requester, who may also have become disillusioned with the Act during the process and reluctant to make further requests. At the same time, some authorities may decide to exploit the long delays, calculating that even a plainly unjustified refusal may go uncorrected for a prolonged period.
	The problem is at least partly attributable to the level of funding provided to the commissioner's office, although efficiency gains may be possible. The whole office has been underfunded, and it has not had the resources honourably intended by the Government. I know that every section of this House cries out for yet more money. We have all heard, even today, about the genuine constraints that exist within expanding, very desirable offices. However, when I look across the west midlands and see what the chief executive of Walsall metropolitan borough council is paid, I think of a very significant public figure, who has been of service to this House and the country, who has met the criteria set by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, and who is fully justified in receiving 140,000. It is a remarkable comment on where this country has arrived at that BBC executives can earn three or four times what the Prime Minister earns. We now have a system whereby the political people who are held accountable by this House and by an electorate at election time are paid significantly less than people who are doing jobs such as chief executive of a local authority or town clerk and who, when I was a boy, earned something immediately comparable with what a Member of Parliament received, or a little more.
	I believe that Richard Thomas is a significant public servant. He is retiring at the end of next year, having come into office around 2000. He has had a monumental job to do, and he has accomplished much. I would like him to have been able to accomplish much more, as, I am sure, would many Members of Parliament. However, within the constraints with which we have operated, he has been a fine public servant, and I do not begrudge him the amount of money that the Government have sought through an Order of this House.

Bob Spink: I cast no aspersions whatever on the Information Commissioner's performance or integrityI am sure that he is an honourable man who does an excellent job. However, given the economic background at the moment, particularly today, I am surprised by the mood of the House. I know that it is very easy to give away public money, but how much money is being given away as result of this decision?
	I am particularly concerned about the backdating by one year of this pay award to someone who is retiring in a year's time. My constituents will say to me, Is this jobs for the boys?, and Are you rewarding your friends? People will rightly raise those concerns. Over a four-year period, with the one-year backdating, we are talking about 250,000 of additional public money being given for a job that is not, in essence, changing. This public servant may deserve that amount, but many public servants who work diligently in very important jobs would want that sort of pay increase. I wonder how the Government, and particularly the Secretary of State, will respond to teachers, firemen and police officers who are told that they have to live with a low, constrained pay rise next year when their turn comes round. Those people might raise the issue of a 40 per cent. pay rise, backdated one year, for this individual who is already reasonably highly paid compared with many other important public servants.
	We must not set a precedent. I do not want to be churlish or upset the mood of the House, but I am concerned about this matter, and the case of other individuals, such as the chairman of the Electoral Commission, whose proposed salary was reduced from 152,000 to 100,000 following the amendment in the names of the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) and myself last week. The House should consider such matters carefully, and I am not sure that we have.

Jack Straw: With the leave of the House, I shall respond to the points made. First, on the level of the salary, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) asked why we were debating the salary of one individual. We are doing so because of a statutory provision. When the Freedom of Information Bill was going through the House, the House was anxious, as were the Government, that this individual should be an officer of Parliament, not a creature of the Government. Although there has to be a strong relationship between the Information Commissioner and the so-called sponsoring Department, which is mine, the salary and much else is set by the House. There may be better ways of setting the salary in future. All I say is that if other salaries were set in this way, including those in the BBC, we would not see the most ludicrous salaries paid on the most ludicrous non-justifications. The chief executive of the BBC is paid an astonishing 800,000 on the grounds that it is the market ratea market that is set entirely by the BBC.

Simon Hughes: I understand why we are dealing with the measure here. Will the Secretary of State arrange for the list of all those whose salaries Parliament sets to be put in the Library as soon as is practical, showing the current post holders and their salaries?

Jack Straw: Yes, I can do that.
	For the benefit of the House, it was proposed that the salary of the chair of the Electoral Commissionthis has been accepted by Jenny Watson, the candidate who was selected by the Speaker's Panelbe reduced from the 150,000 advertised by the House to 100,000. That amount is for a three-day week. On a pro rata basis, she would be paid 166,000 for a five-day week, which is more than the salary of the Information Commissioner, notwithstanding the fact that we are talking about an executive position that combines the posts of chairman and chief executive, as it is a corporation sole. The Electoral Commission post is that of chairman only.

Bob Spink: The right hon. Gentleman may not be aware that there is an amendment to reduce that 100,000 to the level of an MP's salary.

Jack Straw: That is a matter for this House, but I was speaking ad referendum, and merely making the point that the salary of 100,000 has the approbation of the all-party Speaker's Panel; it is a comparable point.
	I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West said about the importance of public service. A sentiment is shared among the parties that that idea has got slightly out of kilter, and we need to readjust it. It is striking that in the United States, the salaries of public officials are typically lower than they are here, including those of the judiciary. People simply accept that if they are going to be public servants, they will get less. They may be able to make up the difference later on.
	A point was made about the nature of the functions. The operation costs 16 million a year for 250 staff. I say with respect to those who raised the matter that that is not comparable to a large executive, administrative operation. It involves quasi-judicial functions, and the amount paid to the Information Commissioner is significantly less than, for example, that paid to a Court of Appeal judge, who has no administrative functions or Department behind him. One expects to have to pay for the high quality, integrity and independence necessary to make judicial decisions.
	I was asked about the availability of resources and backlog. We are conscious of the backlogs, the responsibility for which is not by any means to be laid principally at the Information Commissioner's door. Such backlogs are partly inherent in the process, which Parliament established. Public authorities, including Departments and the House, are tardy with responses to requests from the Information Commissioner. The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills), who has been leading on the matter in the Department with the Information Commissioner, has taken many steps to improve the resources available to the Information Commissioner, including through secondments from the Government to his office.

Andrew Miller: Apropos the resources that have been given to the Information Commissioner, much of his hidden work is chasing facts about some of the data protection cases that he has to undertake. There is much information that he fails to get. For example, the Royal Bank of Scotland has refused him some information. Should not we ensure that we give him the tools as well as the salary to do the job?

Jack Straw: The commissioner has made no request for further powers. He has the tools to do the job as well as significant enforcement powers. Funding arrangements for data protection are differentit is self-funded from fees, and we propose to change from the 35 flat-rate fee to a tiered fee, which takes account of the size of the data holders.
	My original proposal nine years ago was that a significant part of the Information Commissioner's funding should come from a modest fee for each information request. That was not followed through in 2001-02 and, when the Government suggested it more recently, it was met with a loud raspberry.

Simon Hughes: The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said that the Government should be proud of creating the structure. However, does the Secretary of State accept that long delays often obviate the benefit of the whole system? Producing a draft dossier about weapons of mass destruction five years later is not nearly as useful as producing it a year later.

Jack Straw: That was not principally the Information Commissioner's responsibility.
	The hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) asked about enforcement of the new data-sharing code of practice. It will be a statutory code, subject to scrutiny by Parliament. It will be admissible in legal proceedings and taken into account by the courts and the information tribunal in determining relevant questions such as compliance with data protection principles.
	The last point to which I need to respond is the reason for dealing with the matter now, when it dates back to November 2007. The Government are not perfect and I am not perfect. In a more perfect world, the matter would have been tackled earlier, but I am glad that the proposal has the approbation of the three main parties if not that of the whole House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That, in respect of service from 30th November 2007, the salary of the Information Commissioner shall be at a yearly rate of 140,000.

ADMINISTRATION

Ordered,
	That Pete Wishart be discharged from the Administration Committee and John Mason be added. [Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

SCOTTISH AFFAIRS

Ordered,
	That Mr Angus MacNeil be discharged from the Scottish Affairs Committee and Pete Wishart be added. [Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY

Resolved,
	That this House agrees with the recommendation to the Prime Minister that Sir Alan Beith be discharged from the Intelligence and Security Committee and Sir Menzies Campbell be added. [Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

CARE FARMING

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Mark Tami.]

Mark Todd: I chose this subject because of Highfields farm in my constituency near Etwall. I have known Roger and Beryl Hosking, who run Highfields farm, virtually since I became a Member. The farm produces eggs from around 20,000 free-range birds. However, Roger and Beryl also use their farm to care for young people who have struggled with orthodox education or who have found it hard to stay on the rails.
	At various times, Roger and Beryl have offered places both to the local education authorityup to 30 young people a weekand to the youth offending service, giving participants a unique setting in which to learn basic work skills, team working, respect for others and, critically, respect for themselves. Some of those who have passed through the farm have returned as workers, and no offenders who have been there have reoffended.
	It is a moving experience to visit Highfields. There is a strong faith element to Roger's commitment to his task and a great deal of love for young people towards whom many people are perhaps not so affectionate. What Roger is doingrunning an egg farm, handling delicate objects and teaching youngsters who perhaps do not have the most natural grasp of delicate things to take care, to respect and listen to others and then gradually to build up their self-disciplineis a marvellous thing to see.
	Highfields is admirable, but why should it be of interest to the House? Highfields farm is part of a wider movement, although movement is probably a bit of an overstatement. For a start, many people do not recognise the term care farm and would not say that they were involved in one. However, care farms are extraordinarily diverse and there is no common model. I will touch on some of the implications of that later in my speech.
	I want to draw on the research conducted by the university of Essex, funded by Natural England and completed at the start of this year. Around 80 farms in the UK were identified in that study as being run at least in part for social purposes, and 19 of them are city farms, which tend to be fairly small scale. The rest are either independently owned, such as Highfields, or are charities. Care farms vary hugely in scale and type, from smallholdings to quite large ventures, and run across the full range of agricultural activity. As I have mentioned, Highfields is an egg farm, but all varieties of farming activity are to be found in the endeavour.
	Most care farms offer basic skills development aimed at a mix of client groups. Around half offer places to troubled young people who might have had problems with the law, another halfthese categories overlap, because places are offered to various groupsoffer places to those with mental health problems, and more than 80 per cent. cater at one stage or another for those with learning difficulties.
	Referrals come from a wide variety of sources, including Connexions, youth offending teams, local education authoritiesmainly Derby city council in Roger and Beryl's caseand pupil referral units, to which children who have for various reasons been removed from mainstream education have gone. All those sources have seen a care farm as an appropriate alternative setting.
	The university of Essex study was rather good at identifying some of the measurable changes within at least a subset of those using care farms. The main outcomes were greater self-esteem, stronger social skills for younger people and the formation of a work habit, as many of them had not been used to turning up regularly and working through a day. Another outcome was an increased trust of other young people and adults. Analysis of the clients of seven care farms in the Essex study showed dramatic improvements in self-esteem and vigour, because those outdoor activities involve young people taking part in physical activity. There were also reductions in anger, confusion and frustration. The academics who completed the study conceded that they would need a larger base to establish a proper scientific base, but the study and the anecdotal evidence that I have gained from my visits to Highfields persuaded me that such care in a farm setting can offer tremendous gains to particular young people.
	Theas yet smallUK experience can be compared with far larger initiatives in continental Europe. There are more than 800 care farms in the Netherlands, 500 in Norway and 350 in Italy. In the Netherlands, the sector has a formal support structure, with a clear integration of farm-based care with other state and voluntary provision. In 2005, care farms in the Netherlands had 10,000 clients. Those visits were driven partly by the provision of personal care budgets that allow clients to choose a farm setting for their care. In Norway, an interdepartmental committee covering the various Ministries involved co-ordinating the work of the wide variety of Government agencies that use care farming.
	In comparison, there has been accidental growth of the sector in the UK, which has been driven by the strong individual motivations of particular farm owners. They believe, either for social or religious reasons, as in the case at Highfields, that they owe something to a group of young people, and that a farm setting can deliver a benefit to them better than anywhere else. Although there is a generalised awareness that the use of open spaces is therapeutic both mentally and physically, there has been no link to a formal strategy. Neither has there been any recognition of the value of care farming within a wider agricultural diversification agenda.
	So what do we need? First, as is clear from the Essex study, we need more research on the value and scale of care farming in the UK. Secondly, we need explicit recognition of care farming options in agricultural policy, including access to relevant funding for classrooms and adaptations, for example. I know from my dealings with Highfields that it was immensely challenging to raise resources to provide for education and social meeting areas at the farm and, critically, for adapting the sheds into an appropriate model for a modern egg farm. I would encourage my right hon. Friend the Minister to read that section of the Essex university report about Highfields farm and the immense strain that was placed on the owners when buildings from a certain period were condemned and they thought that what they had invested their lives in would be taken away. They got through that, but not through the aid of any Government agency; they got through it by their individual efforts at fundraising and support.
	We need a clearer identification of this as an area of diversification where support can be provided. Elsewhere in South Derbyshire additional funding has been provided for turning a collection of barns into small business units for industrial purposes, for example. That is very welcome; I am delighted to see resources used in that way, but I believe that it is equally appropriate to support initiatives that will provide an educational or care focus in a rural environment.
	The third aspect of what I wish for is collaboration between the Government Departments focused on youth policy to define how care farming can be facilitated as a youth resource. I managed to get a Home Office Minister to visit Highfields farm some time ago and my right hon. Friend's predecessor visited the farm fairly recently. If she had had a chance to have a word with my noble Friend Lord Rooker, she would have had some insight into what he thought of the place.
	I have spotted that such facilities fall into the classic difficulty in British policy terms of sliding between various silos. It is a farm, so it is the responsibility in some sense of my right hon. Friend who is answering this debate, but the services provided on the farm are educational, which means that they are the responsibility of another Government Department. In respect of caring for young people who have been offenders, it is the responsibility of yet a third Department. One could easily find arguments for saying that other agencies that are the responsibility of other Government Departments might also be engaged in care farms.
	What is required is a focus on those who are beneficiaries of care farms rather than on the individual streams of Government thinking that might touch on various parts of the farm. The critical group of beneficiaries are young people who are disadvantaged in various ways and who have faced adversity; some of that may have been self-imposed but, in other cases, it may have been imposed upon them. If we can focus on that group and put in place the mechanisms necessary to support them through the valuable experience they will get from a care-farming provision, that is my goal. Such collaboration is necessary.
	Fourthly, there is a need for assistance with regulatory burdens. I mentioned the difficulties Highfields had experienced in raising funds to deal with the sheds that were condemned in the early part of this decade. When I saw Roger on Friday, he told me that he had needed assistance to fill in some forms to apply for assistance on one of the educational activities that he was involved in. The difficulty is that the focus of many of these enterprises is not bureaucracy or compliance with Government expectations. Instead, we are often dealing with small enterprises whose people are motivated by very different things. It is helpful to have people who are willing to assist with getting through some of the hurdles of compliance that Governments, perfectly understandably, place in their way. A recognition of the wider therapeutic benefits of care farming in dealing with a range of conditions would also be welcome.
	I feel strongly about the need for a rational approach to the risk involved in operating on a farm. Farms can be dangerous places
	 It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
	 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn .[Mr. Watts.]

Mark Todd: I had not realised that it was now 10 pm, Mr. Speaker.
	As I was saying, farms can be dangerous places. We all accept that. There are still too many accidents on farms. However, I think that depriving young people of the experience of practical work in a rural environment is an overreaction. It would be helpful if some of the agencies involved were helped to understand the opportunities that are available, as well as the limited risks that exist in a properly supervised environment.
	Some useful work has been done by the Mercia constabulary and probation service, showing some of the cost savings that care farms can make by reducing reoffending. As I said at the outset, none of the young offenders placed at Highfields farm have reoffended. Although I accept that that cannot be the outcome in 100 per cent. of cases, surely it will be marvellous if the same dramatic reduction in criminal activity among a group of young people can be replicated. We need to do further research and carry out tests. I suspect that some young people respond better than others to such opportunities, but research on how the model works for a mixed group of young people will require additional support.
	Probation and youth offender services need to be encouraged to consider care farming contractors. We have recently been rethinking the legislative arrangements for contracting to facilitate the use of private and voluntary sector contractors in lieu of direct provision by the state, and care farms provide exactly that model. At the time of the passage of that legislation, I raised the possible implications for smaller suppliers such as Highfields. Regrettably, that farm seems recently to have vanished from the horizon of the relevant probation and youth offender services, which appear not to have been able to find the capacity to continue contracts that have proved fairly successful in the past. That may be related to other factors, but it worried me that the changing framework for contracting for those who provide such services might militate against the smaller specialist provider, and that is what appears to have happened.
	Finally, we need to devise funding models that are suitable for a diverse range of providers who currently struggle individually to locate both clients and capital resources for periodic improvements, but that can be combined with the commercial activity involved in running a farm. Again, Highfields is a good example. I have suggested to Roger on a number of occasions that it should be run as a charity, but he says that the difficulty is that it is a commercial egg farm. It sells eggs, he says. We want to maintain it as a business. The difficulty lies in the lack of access to funding streams as a consequence of that strong element of commercial activity. I would defend it, however. The practical working environment of a businessas opposed to an entirely supported entity such as a charity whose only purpose is to care for young people in the countrysideis valuable in itself. It gets across the message that this is working to produce something that will be sold and that people will earn a living from. That is a valuable part of the experience these young people will have. Assistance in understanding the complexity of running a care farm that has continuing economic activity within it, which must be commercial, is an important requirement.
	I hope that my right hon. Friend will reflect on what I have said and the opportunities that exist not only for farmers looking for alternative sources of income and alternative activities in the countrysidealthough care farming does offer an approach to farm diversificationbut, crucially, for young people. When there is a need to care for a young person better, give them a better future and correct some of the things that have gone wrong in their lives, the setting of an agricultural environment achieves better outcomes. That has been established by academic research, and it now needs to be entrenched and given greater resource and support by Government agencies. I look forward to hearing my right hon. Friend's response.

Jane Kennedy: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on securing this debate. I have opened an Adjournment debate speech with that phrase many times over my past 11 years as a Minister, but I genuinely mean it on this occasion. My hon. Friend may not know that I started my professional career as a child care worker, working with young people in an assessment centre. Although all the young people I worked with have now grown up, I can imagine that many of them would have benefited from the kinds of work that care farms do. He is right to say that our mutual friend Lord Rooker visited the care farm; it is called Highfields Happy Hens. It is obviously an inspirational place, and I know that Lord Rooker found it an enjoyable place to visit as well.
	There are many benefits to care farming, and the benefits to the individuals referred to them are apparent. They include improvements in general health, welfare, self-esteem and behaviour, as well as the benefits of structured routine, helping people with a huge variety of problems and issues to function effectively in their daily lives and to contribute to society. I can believe it when some of the individuals who have benefited from care farming have said that the experience has literally changed their lives.
	I know that these benefits have also been proved by academic research. This is a classic example of something that has been said informally for many yearsin this case about the benefits of country living and activitiesbeing proved to be true. In this instance, it has been proved in a unique, positive and direct way. The therapeutic effects of caring for animals and direct contact with growing activities have been recognised for a long time, although care farming is a novel and exciting method of putting these theories into practice.
	One of DEFRA's key goals is to support farmers in building a profitable, innovative and competitive industry that meets consumers' needs. Our social goals include working to support farming's wider contribution to the long-term sustainability of rural economies and communities and to public health. Care farming takes the notion of meeting consumer needs to a new level. Care farming contributes to both of these important goals I have outlined. It has the capacity to contribute to the health of the farming industry as well as to the health of the individual.
	Part of developing a thriving, competitive farming sector is being imaginative in the use of resources that the farm and the landscape have to offer. I am talking in particular about the benefits of diversification. Diversification can increase farmers' incomes, and expand the farm business base to be more viable and sustainable, and 50 per cent. of farms in England already have diversified activity. Diversification is not the answer for everyone, and a farm business's capacity for diversification depends on a range of issues, not least the location of the farm and the skills of the farmer. Likewise, care farming is not going to be an option for every farm, but it is the kind of creative solution to add to the repertoire of alternatives that farmers can consider to maximise their business opportunities and support the overall viability of the farming business.
	Farm diversification can also benefit the wider rural economy, contributing to other businesses and providing local jobs. The study by Essex university to which my hon. Friend referred found that care farms in the UK employed a total of 657 full-time and part-time staff, as well as providing many additional volunteering opportunities. Many of those jobs are likely to be local, supporting the rural economy, and volunteering opportunities offer people the chance to increase their skills and participate more fully in the community.
	There are also many benefits to farms and the rural community beyond the economic ones. A key problem for farmers is isolation. Farmers are often sole traders, only occasionally hiring in labour, and with families working off-farm they can find themselves working alone, in difficult conditions, for extended periods, without the support of colleagues and family that people in other jobs and businesses take for granted. Because of that, farmers often find themselves suffering from loneliness and depression, and isolated from their local communities. Having other people working alongside them on the farm, be they other members of support staff or the care farming beneficiaries, can help enormously to alleviate such problems. Farmers involved in care farming schemes must feel an added sense of personal satisfaction and achievement when beneficiaries blossom in their care and eventually develop the skills and confidence to move on and to build a new life for themselves, encouraged by their on-farm experiences.
	It is clearly not only the intended beneficiaries of care farming who can reap the rewards of participation in this initiative. Care farming even helps to contribute to the wider awareness of the role of farming and its contribution to the countryside. A key issue identified by the Curry report in 2002 was that consumers as a whole had become disconnected from their food and where it came from, and had little appreciation of the role of farming. Since then, the Department and the industry have been encouraging farmers to try to reconnect themselves with the market and their consumers. That can take many forms, such as direct selling through farm shops and farmers' markets.
	In addition, DEFRA, through its environmental stewardship schemes, along with other organisations such as Linking Environment and FarmingLEAFhas been encouraging farmers to open up their farms to the public, to encourage a greater understanding of farming. Another example of that, other than care farms, is open farm Sunday, which has been running for three years. Last year, more than 400 farmers opened their doors to more than 150,000 members of the public, educating them about farming and food. My hon. Friend might think that I have wandered a little from the issue of care farming, but there was a point to my previous comment, because like those initiatives, care farming educates its participants about the purpose and value of farming, by involving them directly in the work activities of farms so that they can appreciate the importance of the role, and, in addition, gain pride and self-esteem from their participation. It also restores pride in the farmers providing the service. It increases, yet again, the value we are obtaining from our farms and the land, and it opens up the eyes of the community to the kind of valuable contribution that farming, as an industry, can make to wider society.
	It is good to see the concept of care farming spreading in England, although we have a long way to go in its implementation to catch up with some of our European neighbours. Debates such as this will usefully serve to raise awareness of the existence of care farming and the benefits it brings. However, it will be down to individual deliverers of health and social care, education and ex-offender rehabilitation, whether they wish to spend their funding in this way and incorporate such an initiative in their portfolios of health and welfare support activities. It is also very much an individual business and personal decision for farmers whether this kind of activity can contribute to the viability of their farm, and whether they have the skills and commitment to contribute to making their farms a key part of rehabilitation and support for disadvantaged people. However, I am sure that with increased awareness of both the activities in practice and the research into the impacts of care farming that have been described this evening, this initiative will move from being a fairly niche activity to take its place beside other recognised caring activities as a valuable resource for social and health care practitioners to draw upon.

Mark Todd: Would it therefore be reasonable for bids for funding for diversificationto create the appropriate environment, such as classrooms or adaptations to meet the needs of particular client groupsto be made to agencies supported by the Minister's Department?

Jane Kennedy: I shall come to that point in a moment. What my hon. Friend has described tonight could be taken as a simple manifesto for the development of care farms. He has made some reasonable requests, including collaboration between Departments and recognition of the therapeutic benefits. Those measures do not cost money, but the will to carry them forward is necessary. He mentions assistance with regulatory burdens, and I listened to his description of the impact on the farm that we have been discussing this evening. I also take seriously his comments about a rational approach to risk in the care of young people, and he makes a good point.
	I have a suggestion for my hon. Friend on the issue of funding which he may wish to take up. We cannot escape the fact that care farms need to be run as sustainable businesses, with their customerswhether local authorities or primary care trustspurchasing the services as an integrated part of their provision for people with disabilities or other mental or social needs. I believe that set-up funding may be available from DEFRA through the rural development programme for England, but for their long-term sustainability care farms should be funded through the mainstream budgets for people with disabilities or other mental or social needs. It would be easy for me, as Minister of State with responsibility for farming, to stand here and commit other people's budgets, so I will not do that, but if the care farm practitioner steering group wishes to come to discuss some of its ideas with me, I would be happy to meet it. I know that its members recognise that care farms need to be run as viable businesses, but there may be things that we can do across government, engaging colleagues in the Home Office and the Department of Health in a way that might help to achieve those obvious benefits without a great deal of investment.

Mark Todd: Such an approach might even save money, because the evidence is that the care offered is extraordinarily cost-effective. This is not a plea for money, nor is it a plea to business for a load of subsidies. What is required is a more coherent response from government.

Jane Kennedy: My hon. Friend is right. I undertake to meet the care farm practitioner steering group, if it wishes to take up that invitation. We can then discuss what more we could do across Government to encourage what is an important and valuable initiative.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at eighteen minutes past Ten o'clock.